...what about the stone, Mr Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?""What of it?""Well, how can that be real?""Prove that it is not," said Xenophilius. Hermione looked out
— Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows
Quotes About Atheism
Albert Einstein described a position between belief and disbelief: he did not try to imagine a personal God, and found it enough to stand in awe at the structure of the world. Charlie Chaplin was plainer, saying that by simple common sense he did not believe in God. Woody Allen made a joke of it: to you I'm an atheist, to God I'm the loyal opposition.
Some of the sharpest lines are arguments. Voltaire warned that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. George Bernard Shaw declared that at present there is not a single credible established religion in the world. Nietzsche mocked freethinkers who remain, at some gut level, still a Christian. Gustave Flaubert pointed to a moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when the gods had ceased to be and the Christ had not yet come. Augustine answered the skeptic with a question of his own, doubting that any man is skillful enough to have fashioned himself.
Some of the sharpest lines are arguments. Voltaire warned that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. George Bernard Shaw declared that at present there is not a single credible established religion in the world. Nietzsche mocked freethinkers who remain, at some gut level, still a Christian. Gustave Flaubert pointed to a moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when the gods had ceased to be and the Christ had not yet come. Augustine answered the skeptic with a question of his own, doubting that any man is skillful enough to have fashioned himself.
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
— The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings
How could any Lord have made this world?... there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for this world to commit... No happiness lasted.
— To the Lighthouse
A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith (he may or may not take that step), while the indifferent one has no faith, apart from a bad fear.
— Demons
I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.
— Notebooks 1951-1959
— Down and Out in Paris and London
Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.
— The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
— Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de M. de Voltaire
Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.
— The Letters, 1830-1880
God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
— The Essays
It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.
— Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
— Letters and Other Writings of James Madison Volume 3
Our creed [atheism] is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.
— A Life of Erwin Schrödinger
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
Just 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.
By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.
By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were.
— A Life of Erwin Schrödinger
If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.