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Quotes against religion

102 quotes from 58 people

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Oh, that some one would save them from their Saviour!
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Second Part, XXVIIn context
- Christianity
Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto me!
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Second Part, XXVIIn context
- Christianity
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Thomas Paine1737–1809
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal1623–1662
- Good & Evil
Religion to me has always been the wound, not the bandage.
DPDennis Potter1935–1994
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.
Salman Rushdieborn 1947Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture (6 February 1990)
- Ideas
I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), “The Emotional Factor”
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires⁠—desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918), Ch. VI: International relations, p. 97
I regard [religion] as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)
The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920), Part I, The Present Condition of Russia, Ch. 1: What Is Hoped From Bolshevism
- Politics
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
- Morality
There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), “The Moral Problem”
- Christianity
Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 107
- Christianity
- Courage
In so far as religion makes its appeal to fear, it is lowering to human dignity.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 107
- Fear