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Quotes about atheism

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Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Mere Christianity
A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere⁠—‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Surprised by Joy (1955), Ch. XII: “Guns and Good Company”
Even atheists rebel and express, like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Problem of Pain (1940), Ch. VI
Religion has two principal enemies, fanaticism and infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.
Thomas Paine1737–1809Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
- Religion
The atheist who affects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects reason, plunge themselves alike into inextricable difficulties.
Thomas Paine1737–1809Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
- Religion
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana1863–1952Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself.
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), pp. 33–34
- God
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
- Morality
One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.
Simone Weil1909–1943Last Notebook (1942) p. 84
- Love
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification.
Simone Weil1909–1943“Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine” as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
- Faith
- Religion
Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
Simone Weil1909–1943“Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine” as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
- Religion
Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
Simone Weil1909–1943Last Notebook (1942) p. 308
- Religion
To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
Simone Weil1909–1943Last Notebook (1942) p. 137
- Faith
I believe the only reality is how we treat each other. The morality comes from the absence of any grander scheme, not from the presence of any grander scheme.
Joss Whedonborn 1964“Joss Whedon: Atheist & Absurdist”, comments made in a Q&A-session in Australia, while promoting his movie Serenity (2005)
- Morality
I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up⁠—they have no holidays.
Henny Youngman1906–1998
- Holidays