“As the years went on I gradually transmogrified from being an evolutionary biologist to an evolutionary biologist atheist and now I'm more of an atheist than an evolutionary biologist. I realized that creationism, the opposition to evolution, is the least of our worries that religion promulgates, compared to someone throwing acid in the face of a schoolgirl in Afghanistan.”

“I don’t. No, no, no.”

“I myself do not believe in a god who has or had a human form and to whom I owe my existence. I believe it is man who created God in his image and not the other way round.”

“When I was 8 years old, I tried prayer. And it didn't work!”

"[I]t's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. ... The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong."

“Because of his loudly avowed atheism, he was labeled ‘the heretic’ by devout classmates.”

“If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.”

“That he was an infidel in religious matters seems as generally allowed as it appears unaccountable.”

“If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It’s a gang mentality.”

“Our humanist attitude should therefore throughout be to stress what we all have in common with each other and relegate quarrelsome religion to the private domain where it can do [less] harm.”

“We shall be astonished at the long continuance of the delusion that has led the human intellect astray, through the mysterious wilderness of deception, by the cunning intrigues of church and State.” 

"In the Bible, there is no mention of the Trinity."

“I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist.”

“[T]he religion of one age is, as a rule, the literary entertainment of the next.”

“As to Cavendish's religion, he was nothing at all. The only subjects in which he appeared to take any interest were science.”

"I am a devout atheist — nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator."

"People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers."

“We are looking for a complete, coherent, and simple understanding of reality. Given what we know about the universe, there seems to be no reason to invoke God as part of this description.”

“It would be an exaggeration to say I’m not afraid of death, but I’m not afraid of what comes after, because I’m not a believer.”

"There is so much yet to discover, and I am perplexed and frustrated by religion, which holds humanity back from its potential to evolve and to discover by clinging to improbable stories that deny evolution and so many observable and verifiable truths."

“Humans saved themselves by creating religion, which enabled them to maintain themselves somehow, to survive in the midst of an uncompromising, all-powerful nature. It is a very basic instinct that is thoroughly rooted in human nature.”

"The historian owes the dead nothing but the truth." 

"I was never religious in the theological sense. I never outgrew my conversion to atheist at 13."

“If a designer was designing us, either they’re a terrible designer or they’ve got a great sense of humor, because we’re carrying around all sorts of genes that don’t work.”

“One of the most encyclopedic scientists of the time, Humboldt was a Pantheist like his friend Goethe, and a contemptuous anti-clerical like his friend F. Arago. ... His letters use very strong language about the Churches to the end of his life. He calls Luther ‘that diabolical reformer.’ ”

"I made them quit, essentially. When I was nine years old I decided that I was an atheist. So I told them, 'Well you shouldn't go to church anymore, it's silly.' Well, apparently they'd been going to church primarily for my benefit. So after I refused to go, they quit going too."

“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher answer' — but none exists.”

“Public prayer is not intended to promote religious values, but to enhance the authority of some churches and some political views over others. Similarly with the posting of the Ten Commandments. It is about power, not about religion. ... And the Constitution clearly intends that there should be freedom from religion.”

"Of course, it was impossible to teach biology without teaching evolution. But to the fundamentalists, evolution symbolized all that was repugnant. It was a threat to religious belief, they thought. They equated evolution with agnosticism, which in turn they made synonymous with atheism."

“All knowledge that is not the real product of observation, or of consequences deduced from observation, is entirely groundless and illusory.”

“My views have changed from a belief that my prayers were heard to clear atheism. ... Over and over, expanding scientific knowledge has shown religious claims to be false."

"None of the beliefs in gods has any merit.”

"[As to] the question of a creator. A creator of what? ... I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals."

As I write, in New York in mid-December, the city is full of Christmas trees and menorahs. I would be inclined to say, as an old Jewish atheist, that these things mean nothing to me, but Hannukah songs are evoked in my mind whenever an image of a menorah impinges on my retina, even when I am not consciously aware of it.

“I have the honesty to say I’m an atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.”

"Religion can impact health in good ways, but often it has a bad impact on the health of the believer and also on the health of others. I fully support the right of people to follow any religion or any belief system, but I don’t acknowledge their right to impose their beliefs on others. I draw the line when their beliefs cause harm or the deaths of innocent children or when they endanger public health."

“I've never met a healthy person who worried much about his health, or a good person who worried much about his soul.”

"I derive comfort from the knowledge that I am just another stitch in the fabric, that I was molded by natural selection, not by divine decree or intelligent design."

“Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.”

"So I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths.”

“I realized early on that it is detailed scientific knowledge which makes certain religious beliefs untenable. A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically?"

“The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.”

"He always said that he just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. He said to us, ‘It’s time,’ and he went to sleep."

"I wish he hadn't done it. I have to explain to people it was a joke. I'm an atheist."

"One time, when I wasn't there, somebody nominated me for president of the youth center. The elders began getting nervous, because I was an avowed atheist by that time."

" 'Of all the souls I have encountered ... his was the most human.' Thx @TheRealNimoy for bringing Spock to life for us."

“Yes, I believe in revelation, but a permanent revelation of man to himself and by himself, a rational revelation that is nothing but the result of the progress of science and of the contemporary conscience, a revelation that is always only partial and relative and that is effectuated by the acquisition of new truths and even more by the elimination of ancient errors.”

"I was raised in an Orthodox household, and I was raised devoutly religious up until around age 13 or so. In my adolescent years, one of the defining actions in my life was breaking away from all religious belief whatsoever."

“The deeper our insight into the methods of nature ... the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.”

“My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the 'Day of Prayer' in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say 'Enough!' ”

"In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the Earth — and a central plank of established Christian religion — on its head."

"Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.”

What does Priestley mean, by an unbeliever, when he applies it to you? How much did he unbelieve himself? Gibbon had it right when he denominated his Creed, 'scanty.' "

“What I want to happen to religion in the future is this: I want it to be like bowling. It's a hobby, something some people will enjoy, that has some virtues to it, that will have its own institutions and its traditions and its own television programming, and that families will enjoy together. It's not something I want to ban or that should affect hiring and firing decisions, or that interferes with public policy. It will be perfectly harmless as long as we don't elect our politicians on the basis of their bowling score, or go to war with people who play nine-pin instead of ten-pin, or use folklore about backspin to make decrees about how biology works.”

“The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God."
"I am an infidel today.”

"Oh, I have plenty of biases, all right. I'm quite biased toward depending upon what my senses and my intellect tell me about the world around me, and I'm quite biased against invoking mysterious mythical beings that other people want to claim exist but which they can offer no evidence for."

"By telling students that the beliefs of a superstitious tribe thousands of years ago should be treated on an equal basis with the evidence collected with our most advanced equipment today is to completely undermine the entire process of scientific inquiry."

"And one more thing: In your original message you identified yourself as an elementary school teacher. If you are going to insist on holding to a creationist viewpoint, then please stay away from my children. I want my kids to learn about 'real' science, and how the 'real' world operates, and not be fed the mythical goings-on in the fantasy-land of creationism."

"The social organizations of religion provide ... a means for people to feel connected to other people. But I think that science certainly can replace the God concept. As the saying goes, there isn't much left for God to do because science has explained so much of it."

"So for me, the idea I would be able to have an entertaining and enjoyable afternoon discussing with people with whom I suppose I have to say I disagree at the most fundamental level, because I don't have a particular faith, or any faith in fact – however, I think that difference of opinion and view of the world is to be celebrated and explored."

He “was an activist atheist, a proselytizing atheist. He thought that not saying you were an atheist hurt the cause of reality.”

"I am not, however, militant in my atheism. The great English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac is a militant atheist. I suppose he is interested in arguing about the existence of God. I am not."

"Your book drove away the constraint of my old superstition, as if it had been a nightmare."

“I have been ... suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the center of the universe and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the same, and that it does move. ... I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church.”

“I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”

"As nontheists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity."

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

“Lisi, an atheist, says the whole notion of God misses the point. He’s not after the creator of the universe — he’s after the universe itself. Everything.”

“All that my work has shown is that you don't have to say that the way the universe began was the personal whim of God.”