Inspirational Quotes on Atheism

“These, following science, want to make a just order for themselves by reason alone, but without Christ now, not as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, there is no sin. And in their own terms, that is correct: for if you have no God, what crime is there to speak of? In Europe the people are rising up against the rich with force, and popular leaders everywhere are leading them to bloodshed and teaching them that their wrath is righteous. But "their wrath is accursed, for it is cruel.”

“A nice God you've got, if man created him in his image and likeness.”

“On the contrary, complete atheism is more respectable than worldly indifference,” Tikhon answered, with visible gaiety and good-nature. “Oho, that’s how you get round it!” “A complete atheist stands on the last rung but one before absolute faith (he may or may not step higher), but an indifferent man has no longer any faith at all, nothing but an ugly fear, and that only on rare occasions, if he is a sentimental man.”

“...religion was just a bridle for the barbarous part of the population, and indeed Stepan Arkadyich could not even stand through a short prayer service without aching feet and could not grasp the point of all these fearsome and high-flown words about the other world, when life in this one could be so merry.”

“It was a feeling which he had seen before in his mother; but no chord within vibrated to it.”

“The Jewish people trusted thmself to do nothing except that what was commanded by God; they were without will even in external things; the authority of religion extended itself even to their food. The Christian religion, on the other hand, in all external things made humankind dependent on itself, i.e. placed in it what Judaism placed out of it. … Thus do things change. What yesterday was still religion is no longer such to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.”

“The Jewish people trusted themself to do nothing except that what was commanded by God; they were without will even in external things; the authority of religion extended itself even to their food. The Christian religion, on the other hand, in all external things made humankind dependent on itself, i.e. placed in it what Judaism placed out of itself. … Thus do things change. What yesterday was still religion is no longer such to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.”

“I by no means say … God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, … . I only show that they are not that which the illusions of theology make them[.]”

“[This philosophy] … is antagonistic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman”

“In reality, where everything passes on naturally, the copy follows the original, the image the thing which it represents, the thought its object, but on the supernatural, miraculous ground of theology, the original follows the copy, the thing its own likeness. "it is strange" says St. Augustine, "But nevertheless true, that this world could not exist if it was not known to God." That means the world is known and thought before it exists; nay it exists only because it was thought of. The existence is a consequence of the knowledge or of the act of thinking, the original a consequence of the copy, the object a consequence of its likeness.”

“I do not regard the limits of the past and present as the limits of humanity of the future”

“[This philosophy] does not … regard the pen as the only fit organ for the revelation of truth, but the eye and ear, the hand and foot”

“[T]hese days illusion only is scared, truth profane. … [S]acredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to highest degree of sacredness. Religion has disappeared, … for it has been substituted … the appearance of religion[.]”

“[T]here is no distinction between the predicates of the divine and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between the divine and human subject … [T]he predicates are not accidents, but express the essence of the subject … [T]he essence of religion … conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as divine relations[.]”

“The idea that the Big Bang theory allows us to infer that the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago has attracted the attention of many theists. This theory seemed to confirm or at least lend support to the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Indeed, the suggestion of a divine creation seemed so compelling that the notion that "God created the Big Bang" has taken a hold on popular consciousness and become a staple in the theistic component of ‘educated common sense’. By contrast, the response of atheists and agnostics to this development has been comparatively lame.”