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Many an atheist is a believer without knowing it juast as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't.
Frederick BuechnerAn atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.
Bertrand RussellAn atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.
Carl SaganWe shall say without hesitation that the atheist who is moved by love is moved by the Spirit of God; an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies.
William TempleIf you can remain as an atheist in a falling plane, then it means you are a real atheist!
Mehmet Murat IldanOf all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.
Criss JamiIf only I wasn't an atheist, I could get away with anything. You'd just ask for forgiveness and then you'd be forgiven. It sounds much better than having to live with guilt.
Keira KnightleyI'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?'
Jodie FosterIf I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.
Douglas AdamsI consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
Alan LightmanThroughout the three decades preceding the Civil War, the anticlerical ethos of the radical abolitionists was used against them by religious opponents of emancipation, who . . . even described abolitionism itself as an atheist plot.
Susan JacobyYou have two choices with Obama. You either believe that he is a man of Christ... or you think he's a liar. And I'm surprised by the number of atheist free thinkers that support Obama, and their argument is essentially, 'He's lying about being religious 'cause you have to do that to get elected.' It's a horrible reason to like somebody.
Penn JilletteI'm not an atheist. I do have faith in God. I do not judge people for their faith. I judge people who use religion to hurt people. I don't believe in a religion that shuns people for their beliefs, or that you should hurt people for their beliefs.
Leah ReminiThe atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.
Baron d'HolbachAtheist, without God, I look to humankind for sympathy, for love, for hope, for effort, for aid.
Charles BradlaughEvery age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room.
Mary McCarthyI grew up in a mixed religious household. And it was volatile. My dad's atheist, my mom's agnostic. Just constant fighting. There's no God! There might be!
Bonnie McFarlaneIf thou beest ever so exact in thy morals, and not a worshiper of God, then thou art an atheist.
William GurnallFrom the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
Albert EinsteinNo church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit.
Mark TwainI had abandoned Catholicism, but even during my short militant atheist period I maintained an interest in western religious art and music.
Tim CraneI was brought up Catholic. I'm lapsed. From the age of three I was with the nuns. Now I'm an atheist. I think religion does a lot for us but I can't quite believe it, alas... It's just a personal choice. I love the idea of heaven though. Who doesn't? It's lovely.
Paul BettanyEven if the absence of evidence for a given god were not evidence of its absence, it would still be evidence that the belief in that god is unreasonable. That's the only proposition that any atheist of any kind has to demonstrate in order to win the argument. Because anything beyond that... is just having fun.
Scott CliftonIโm not a religious person; I would call myself an atheist. I donโt have a good story behind it, Iโm just reasonable.
Anthony JeselnikIf by some bizarre chance there turns out to be a god [...], I'm willing to bet he's an atheist too.
Salman Rushdie"Agnostic" is a much more recent word than "atheist", coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to mean "without knowledge of God" and acquiring the usage of "being doubtful about the existence of God."
Jim HerrickI am an atheist. I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us.
Carl ReinerI will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.
John AdamsWhen I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'
Quentin CrispToday when the Fundamentalists are once more insisting that the fundamentals of fundamentalism are fundamental to our being No. 1 on the Lord's totem pole, it's very brave of you to invite the "resident atheist" of mid-Missouri to share her thoughts with you.
Ruth Hurmence GreenI can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
Abraham LincolnThe insistence on truthfulness does not disturb the freedom of the individual. The social obligation implied in Satyagraha turns the freedom of the individual into moral freedom. An atheist is free to say or to do what he likes, provided he does what he says and says what he does. So, in the context of social relations, the freedom of the individual is moral freedom.
Goparaju Ramachandra RaoI am an atheist. I do not believe in prayers, I believe in work. And my work is that of an author. My pen is my weapon.
Taslima NasrinThe people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.
Evangeline LillySince man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.
Fyodor DostoevskyThe making of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation and training which brings into play the primary factors of social progress.
Joseph McCabeWhen I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.
Thomas HuxleyThis crusade to separate church and state is only one expression of my raison d'รชtre. I'm an atheist, but I'm also an anarchist, and a feminist, and an integrationist.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair