Quotes Through the Ages
The words that challenged orthodoxy, century by century.
48 quotes
Ancient
300 BCE
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
attributed (c. 50 CE)
300
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
attributed (c. 300 BCE)
Early Modern
1615
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
18th Century
1765
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Questions sur les miracles (1765)
1776
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”
The Crisis (1776)
1776
“These are the times that try men's souls.”
The American Crisis (1776)
1780
“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
attributed
1780
“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature.”
attributed
1787
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”
Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
1791
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
Rights of Man (1791)
1794
“My own mind is my own church.”
The Age of Reason (1794)
1794
“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.”
The Age of Reason (1794)
1814
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot.”
Letter to Horatio Spafford (1814)
19th Century
1859
“If I could not be free, I would not live at all.”
On Liberty (1859)
1859
“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
On Liberty (1859)
1859
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
On Liberty (1859)
1859
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race.”
On Liberty (1859)
1870
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
attributed
1870
“I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.”
attributed
1870
“If we are honest — if we are courageous — we must follow reason wherever it leads.”
attributed
1870
“The clergy know, that I know, that they know, that they do not know.”
Works, Vol. 2 — epigraph
1870
“The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.”
attributed
1870
“If there be a God, I think he would like me to paint him as I see him, not as some book says he is.”
attributed
1872
“The destroyer of weeds, thistles and thorns is a benefactor, whether he soweth grain or not.”
The Gods (1872)
1872
“An honest God is the noblest work of man.”
The Gods (1872)
1872
“Every cradle asks us 'Whence?' and every coffin 'Whither?' The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions just as well as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.”
The Gods (1872)
1872
“Reason, observation, and experience — the Holy Trinity of Science.”
The Gods (1872)
1872
“The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation.”
The Gods (1872)
1873
“The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church.”
Individuality (1873)
1877
“In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.”
The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child (1877)
1877
“Over the vast plain of the unconscious the obedient lightning wrote the fiery epitaph of all rebellion.”
The Ghosts (1877)
1879
“If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.”
Some Mistakes of Moses (1879)
1888
“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”
The Antichrist (1888)
20th Century
1927
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.”
Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
1930
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.”
The New York Times (1930)
1949
“The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
1950
“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”
attributed
1950
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
attributed
1950
“A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers.”
attributed
1950
“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
attributed
1950
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
attributed
1950
“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”
attributed
1980
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Cosmos (1980)
1994
“If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words.”
I, Asimov: A Memoir (1994)
1995
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)
21st Century
2006
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
The God Delusion (2006)
2007
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
God Is Not Great (2007)
2011
“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
Real Time with Bill Maher (2011)