Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

If "everybody knows" such-and-such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one.

Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

In isolated societies creeds can be preserved. It is where people of different traditions, outlook and creeds mingle freely and exchange ideas that religious beliefs begin to be eroded. No one changes his beliefs without some instigation, some novel experience, some modification of the customary course of things, and in a closed society people believe what all their fellows obviously believe. Only when they are brought into contact with persons whom they respect holding different views do they begin to look at their inherited beliefs critically.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.

Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in Heaven.

The church is the great lost and found department.

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence.

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.

There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.

I 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.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

No religion can long continue to maintain its purity when the church becomes the subservient vassal of the state.

In the relationship between man and religion, the state is firmly committed to a position of neutrality.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

O God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.