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Quotes about religion

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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
- Anti-Religion
- Morality
Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
George MacDonald1824–1905Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 148
- Christianity
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Anti-Religion
- Prayer
Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
- Happiness
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Anti-Religion
- Faith
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke1729–1797A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), Preface
- Clever Jabs
There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch⁠—the schoolmaster⁠—and a mouth which blows upon it⁠—the curé.
Victor Hugo1802–1885Histoire d’un crime. Déposition d’un témoin (1877), Deuxième Journée. La lutte, ch. III: La barricade Saint-Antoine
- Anti-Religion
- Education
I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood. Especially if it’s me!
George Carlin1937–2008“Interview With Jesus”
The true Mystic, realising God, has no need of any Scriptures, for he has touched the source whence all Scriptures flow.
Annie Besant1847–1933The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant
- God
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
Richard Dawkinsborn 1941The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 11. Memes: the new replicators
- Anti-Religion
- Faith
When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of “Orthodoxy, True and False” and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #172
Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?
Voltaire1694–1778Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano’s, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 160 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, 6 April 1767
- Anti-Religion
- Christianity
It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.
H. P. Lovecraft1890–1937“The Temple”—Written 1920; first published in Weird Tales, 6 No. 3 (September 1925)
- Anti-Religion
- Thinking
No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950“The Living Pictures”, The Saturday Review (6 April 1895); reprinted in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932)
To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.
Swami Vivekananda1863–1902Pearls of Wisdom