“I took a sheet of paper, divided it into debt and credit columns on the arguments for and against God and immortality. On Christmas Eve I wrote 'bankrupt' at the foot. And it was on Christmas morning 1895, after I had celebrated three Masses, while the bells of the parish church were ringing out the Christmas message of peace, that, with great pain, I found myself far out from the familiar land — homeless, aimlessly drifting. But the bells were right after all; from that hour on I have been wholly free from the nightmare of doubt that had lain on me for ten years.”

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

"I'm interested in the pre-Christian appreciation of the land and the spirit of things, spirits in animate things and inanimate things. I think it's more of a natural wanting to believe in something natural and something tangible rather than Christianity, which I think is totally fake. Maybe well-meaning, but it's held together by a terrible web of fibs and stealing other people's good stories."

“I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in churches quite a lot)."

"Thankfully, we're moving in a direction where some feel it's not an act of courage simply to state that you don't believe in God. ... We must continue to speak out, be honest about our beliefs."

Originally known as Armistice Day, November 11 marks the anniversary of the ceasefire of World War I in 1918 on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day and Congress made it a legal holiday in 1938. In 1954 Congress renamed the holiday Veterans Day.

Contrary to the myth that there have been “no atheists in foxholes,” nonreligious Americans have and are serving their country with valor and distinction. To recognize their contributions, and “with hope that in the future humankind may learn to avoid all war,” FFRF in 1999 erected the first monument to Atheists in Foxholes, which rests beside its southern Freethought Hall near Talladega, Alabama. In 2015 FFRF placed a second monument at Freethought Hall in Madison, Wisconsin.