http://www.devilschaplains.comA collection of quotes, quips and irreverent thoughts.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=327Hallucinations and illusions are not facts useful for scientific investigation.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=326I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=325My only wish is...to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=324One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature -- a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=323If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=322I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=321Religion is now the first obstacle to women's advancement. Religion pulls human beings backwards, it goes against science and progressiveness. Religion engulfs people with a fear of the supernatural. It bars people from laughing and never allows people to exercise their choice.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=320I know that a creed is the shell of a lie.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=319Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man's gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=318Miracles are doomed; they will drop out like fairies and witchcraft, from among the matter which serious people believe.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=317It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=316Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are shades armed with tooth and claw. They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=315If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=314A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=313"Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is -- He has been hanged here, on these gallows."http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=312It seems that religion, like Communism, can survive only when it can control the information about conflicting beliefs.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=311The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civilization.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=310Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well
Rest, rest, There is no God, no gods who dwell
Crowned with avenging righteousness on high
Nor frowning ministers of their hate in hell.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=309If triangles were to make gods, they would give them three sides.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=308The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=307Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=306When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=305The Atheist Bible, it could be said, has but one word: "THINK."http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=304Not far from the invention of fire... we must rank the invention of doubt.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=303I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=302I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul...No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life -- our desire to go on living -- our dread of coming to an end.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=301By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=300Terror everywhere the beginning of religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=299The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=298Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as wither’d weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=297I 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. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=296God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=295As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=294There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches and the like. All these are the work of human hands aided by money. But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, especially to the dealings of democracies with dictatorships. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=293The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=292Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man is a workman there.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=291Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=290As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=289A certain portion of the human race
Has certainly a taste for being diddled.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=288I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=287Debating Creationists on the topic of Evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=286It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=285A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=284For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=283To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=282He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=281"The Good Book" -- one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=280God is a hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi [burden of proof] rests on the theist.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=279One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=278There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=277Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=276Fundamentalist creationism is not a science but a form of anti-science, where more vocal practitioners, despite their master's and doctoral degrees in the sciences, play fast and loose with the facts of geology and biology.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=275As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=274People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=273People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practised.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=272The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are even bigger pain the second time around.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=271A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=270Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to enquire -- in the midst of myriads of the living & the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=269To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a stick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=268I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=267All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=266I 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.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=265He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=264There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=263Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=262I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=261Lord I disbelieve -- help though my unbelief.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=260The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so!
To my own Gods I go.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=259If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=258I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=257Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first -- rock and roll or Christianity.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=256The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=255Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=254A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=253The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=252And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=251You don't have to believe in atheism, because atheism is based on REASON.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=250I live, therefore I think.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=249There is a story about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said, "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=248The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=247All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former -- of the corruption of the will.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=246Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible. Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=245Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=244The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass -delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=243We have fought long and hard to escape from medieval superstition. I, for one, do not wish to go back.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=242The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=241The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=240In the crowd, herd or gang, it is a mass-mind that operates -- which is to say, a mind without subtlety, a mind without compassion, a mind, finally, uncivilized.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=239Where it is duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=238[T]olerance of intolerance is cowardice.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=237I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=236No spirits, wraiths, hobgoblins, spooks, noumena, superstitions, transcendentals, mystics, invisible hands, supreme creator, angels, demons...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=235One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=234The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=233Who are we? The answer to this question is not only one of the tasks but the task of science.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=232That in order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=231I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=230Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=229The most henious and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=228Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business. I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you'd want them to treat you. The religious right wants to tell people how to live.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=227Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a secthttp://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=226One 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.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=225Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=224What remains, then, for those who cannot pray...This alone, and this is enough: To love virtue, to love truth.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=223When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=222The death of dogma is the birth of morality.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=221I do not know that Christianity holds anything more of importance for the world. It is finished, played out. The only trouble lies in how to get rid of the body before it begins to smell too much.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=220A belief is not true [simply] because it is useful.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=219The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=218Our religion is made so as to wipe out vices; it covers them up, nourishes them, incites them.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=217Oh, what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to believe!http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=216To escape criticism -- do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=215No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter ... than you and I; and all religion ... is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=214A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=213The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe -- that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=212The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow men.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=211Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=210I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=209After all, the sign of a bishop is a crook, and of the archbishop a double-cross.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=208Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=207People everywhere believe things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=206Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=205An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest:
"If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No," said the priest, "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?"http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=204Life by life, and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=203Persecution is born of intolerance, and intolerance is the child of certainty. Before we can tolerate we must doubt.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=202Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education and science to take over.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=201Mystery [the divinity of Jesus Christ] is made a convenient cover for absurdity.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=200Men...have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=199To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient truths; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=198I’m not convinced that faith can move mountains, but I've seen what it can do to skyscrapers.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=197Has science ever retreated? It is [religion] which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=196The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=195The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=194Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=193The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=192The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=191[T]here is no book which tells of a more infamous monster than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and cruelty and revenge, unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God with hell, and extends his outrages throughout all eternity!http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=190The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=189The man who gets on his knees has not learned the right use of his legs.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=188The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=187Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=186People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=185The belief in supernatural forces remains to this day a yoke on the neck of humanity, but at least Thales made it possible, for those of us who wish it, to be free of that yoke.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=184In religion,
What damned error but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=183I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mahomedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family, and would accept of truth by whomsoever offered -- that truth which we can all find, if we will but seek -- in things, not in words; in nature, not in human imagination; in our own hearts, not in temples made with hands.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=182If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=181If there is any God in the universe I don't know it. Some people say they know it instinctively. Well, the errors and foolish things that men have known instinctively are so many we can't talk about them.
As a rule, the less a person knows, the surer he is, and he gets it by instinct...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=180You and I are called "infidels," which means, merely, that we do not submit our necks to yokes.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=179After all, the principal objection which a thinking man has to religion is that religion is not true -- and is not even sane.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=178The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=177Faith is a kind of parasitic plant,
That grasps the nearest stem with tendril-rings;
And as the climate and soil may grant,
So is the sort of tree to which it clings.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=176No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=175The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of him who reads.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=174If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=173Dogma: a lie reiterated and authoritatively injected into the mind of one or more persons who believe that they believe what someone else believes.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=172Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=171We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=170I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=169Those Jesus Freaks
Well, they're friendly but
The shit they believe
Has got their minds all shut
An' they don't even care
When the church takes a cut
Ain't it bleak when you got so much nothin'http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=168God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=167The atheist, for his part, does not necessarily offer an explanation; he simply does not accept the theist's explanation. Therefore, the atheist need only demonstrate that the theist has failed to justify his position.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=166The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=165We grovel and "worship" and pray to God to do what we ourselves ought to have done a thousand years ago, and can do now, as soon as we choose.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=164The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=163Peacefully they will die...and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=162For it is with the mysteries of our Religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure, but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=161That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=160Fear was the gods' begetter in this world.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=159Modern science had its birth with the assertion of the Greek philosopher Thales in 585 B.C. that every observable effect has a physical cause. We should not regard any person as educated unless [they] understand those words...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=158So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=157He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=156The natural is so awesome that we need not go beyond.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=155Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=154Forgive O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=153It is not possible to be ignorant of the end of things if we know their beginning.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=152Yes, we have a soul; but it's made of lots of tiny robots.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=151And do you think that unto such as you,
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,
God gave the secret, and denied it me?—
Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=150The Koran! well, come put me to the test—
Lovely old book in hideous error drest—
Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,
The unbeliever knows his Koran best.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=149All your Western theologies, the whole mythologies of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=148The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=147The question of the origin of the matter in the universe is no longer thought to be beyond the range of science -- everything can be created from nothing...it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=146The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=145What Jupiter? Do not trifle. There is no Jupiter.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=144Having proved mens and brutes bodies on one type: almost superfluous to consider minds.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=143Already have I once been a boy and a girl, and a bush and a bird, and a silent fish in the sea.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=142[A]s children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror...http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=141The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=140Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit...When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirizes the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=139If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=138No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=137[T]heology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=136All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=135I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=134Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=133Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=132If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=131Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=130If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is 'Probably because of something you did.'http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=129A wise man proportions his beliefs to the evidence.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=128Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=127A dogma is the hand of the dead on the throat of the living.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=126If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start his own religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=125If you want to get your soul to heaven,
Trust in me, don't judge or question.
You are broken now, but faith can heal you.
Just do everything I tell you to do.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=124Choices always were a problem for you.
What you need is someone strong to guide you.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow,
What you need is someone strong to guide you -- like me.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=123Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=122There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=121Atheists in foxholes, some say they are myths,
Creations of the mind who just don't exist.
Yet, they answered the call to defend, with great pride.
With reason their watchword, they bled and they died. http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=120I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=119What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=118Faith is believing what you know ain't so.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=117They all err - Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Magians:
Two make Humanity's universal sect:
One man intelligent without religion,
And, one religious without intellect.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=116The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part...What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=115"Faith" means not wanting to know what is true.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=114Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=113Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=112Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=111Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=110Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=109A credulous mind...finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=108Rational science treats its credit notes as always redeemable on demand, while non-rational authoritarianism regards the demand for the redemption of its paper as a disloyal lack of faith. http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=107So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths --
But is that an answer?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=106Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=105[M]agic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=104If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=103I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian. The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat -- which wasn't there. "That may be," said the philosopher: "but a theologian would have found it."http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=102Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=101A simple man believes anything,
but a prudent man gives thought to his steps.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=100Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=99Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=98There is in every village a torch: the schoolmaster -- and an extinguisher: the parson.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=97One's convictions should be proportional to one's evidence.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=96And of all Plagues with which Mankind are Curst,
Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=95It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=94Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=93Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=92What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=91[F]aith and knowledge are related as the two scales of a balance; when the one goes up, the other goes down.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=90The last superstition of the human mind is the superstition that religion in itself is a good thing, though it might be free from dogma. I believe, however, that the religious feeling, as feeling, is wrong, and the civilized man will have nothing to do with it.... [When the] shadow of religion disappeared forever ... I felt that I was free from a disease.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=89Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=88You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=87It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=86People who believe in a divine creator, trying to live their lives in obedience to his supposed wishes and in expectation of a supposed eternal reward, are victims of the greatest confidence trick of all time.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=85The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief -- call it what you will -- than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=84What time has been wasted during man's destiny in the struggle to decide what man's next world will be like! The keener the effort to find out, the less he knew about the present one he lived in.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=83"Faith" is a fine invention, when gentlemen can see
But microscopes are prudent, in an emergency.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=82The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything [that] a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=81Do you think I am superstitious? I am a super-atheist.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=80I turned to speak to God
About the world's despair;
But to make bad matters worse
I found God wasn't there.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=79Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=78Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=77The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind. http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=76The Devil can cite Scripture for his purposes.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=75The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=74Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=73Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=72Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=71The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious...the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=70It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=69What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=68I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=67Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear;
Religion's tyranny did domineer,
At last a mighty one of Greece began
To assert the natural liberty of manhttp://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=66The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=65He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=64The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=63To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both our eyes, is easier than to think.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=62Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do so.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=61The clergy know, I know, that they know that they do not know.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=60Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creedhttp://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=59What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=58Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=57If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=56[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=55The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=54Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=53Science has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=52Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=51It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=50The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reasonhttp://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=49Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=48You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=47The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=46Ubi dubium ibi libertas. Where there is doubt, there is freedom.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=45The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=44In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=43Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=42Faith is believing things by definition, which are not justified by reason. If it were justified by reason, it wouldn't be faith.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=41I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=40The bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=39Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=38Where is my faith? Even deep down...there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul...How painful is this unknown pain - I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal,...What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=37The 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.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=36There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=35Question 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 blind-folded fear.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=34Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=33Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=32I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=31Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=30[S]keptical scrutiny of all ideas...is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonesense.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=29I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=28Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=27Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=26The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=25I used to think religion was harmless nonsense, entitled to at least some respect. [In the wake of September 11th] I'd now drop the 'harmless'. And the last vestige of respect.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=24Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous, those in philosophy only ridiculous.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=23The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=22In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=21Scepticism is the first step towards truth.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=20You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=19The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=18The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=17All thinking men are atheists.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=16Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=15Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=14Theology - An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=13Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=12Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=11The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=10I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=9Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species representing changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeeezing one's eyes shut and wailing 'does not!'http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=8A witty saying proves nothing.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=7The sleep of reason produces monsters.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=6There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=5Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellectuals are skeptical.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=4Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered: Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=3[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=2The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments-of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue-are complete skeptics in religion.http://www.devilschaplains.com/#/getquote?id=1What a book a Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature!