"My family’s religious. As I got older, the church didn’t appeal to me and I went my own way."

"I lost my faith during the war and can't believe they are all up there, flying around or sitting at tables, all those I've lost."

“It is my contention that no other invention of man has brought greater chaos to humanity than the practice of religion.”

"My sort of religion is one of romance. I think the arts are the best thing to hang on to. Arts and science. I can't join the rest of the world in the religions because they have become so bigoted and so dangerous. I just don't believe in them."

“Although we weren’t brought up to be any particular religion, we were taught to say our prayers. I remember one that ended, ‘Thy glorious kingdom, which is for ever and ever. Amen.’ These words made me scream, “I don’t want to be anywhere for ever and ever. It’s too much.” 

"I’m an atheist. I wouldn’t say I’m without spiritual belief particularly, or rather, specifically. Maybe I’m agnostic, but I’m not quite sure there’s some great creator somehow controlling everything and giving us free will. I don’t know; it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me."

BILL MAHER: What religion are you?
ARMISEN: I'm an atheist.

"She says she doesn't believe in God and has a strong sense that meaning is imposed on a chaotic world. 'I learned when my mother died five years ago that there is no there there.' "

"I just think of myself as a comedian, really. I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It’s funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I’m not religious at all. I have no religion."

"I am ... culturally Catholic, but spiritually agnostic."
"Yo soy ... culturalmente Católico, pero espiritualmente agnóstico."

“When asked by journalist Alex Ben Block in the summer of 1972 what his religious affiliation was, Lee answered: ‘None whatsoever.’ Block then pressed him further, asking him if he then believed in God: ‘To be perfectly frank, I really do not.’ ”

"I don’t like religion. I think religion is a con." 

"I was sure that I was an atheist, but as I matured I realized nature is my religion."

“I absolutely believe what Ellie [the atheist astronomer in the movie 'Contact'] believes — that there is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that's out there that we haven't discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don't know any better.”

"Can we get back to the fight against religious psychos who think it’s appropriate to impose their will and their reign of terror onto women?"

“I grew up on the coast of England in the '70s. My dad is white from Cornwall and mum is black from Zimbabwe. Even the idea of us as a family was challenging to most people, but nature had its wicked way and brown babies were born. But from about the age of 5 I was aware that I didn’t fit, I was the black atheist kid in the all-white Catholic school run by nuns, I was an anomaly.” 

“The Ten Commandments, he said, were fine — but not for him.”

“I don't believe in God. I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a soul. I don't believe in anything. I think it's totally right for people to have their own beliefs if it makes them happy, but to me it's a pretty preposterous idea.”

"I never understood the changing of her last name from Sullivan to Lanchester because it sounded more elegant. Nor did I understand her hatred of religion of any kind."

“I recently read 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, which ignited my interest in a scientific, mathematical version of the world. No, I'm not religious. At all. I'm an atheist."

“I do not believe in God. I'm an atheist. I consider myself a critical thinker, and it fascinates me that in the 21st century most people still believe in, as George Carlin puts it, 'the invisible man living in the sky.' ”

"You see, I do exist."

"I treat people good for goodness' sake, not because I'm going to be rewarded in an afterlife."

"I'm pathetically pragmatic. ... I don't believe that there's a higher power that created human beings."

“And yes I have all of the usual objections
To the miseducation of children who, in tax-exempt institutions,
Are taught to externalize blame
And to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain right and wrong
But I quite like the songs. ”

“[F]amily, friends and well-wishers from around the world assured me that prayers and my faith in God would comfort me. I tried to pray but I didn't feel any better, nor did I make any kind of connection with God.”

"If my mother was still alive, I would tell her that I’m not so sure there is a God. But more importantly, I’d explain that I’m searching for our shared faith in humanity."

“I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was  ... nothingness.”

"I would like to believe in a life after death, but the different religions have each got their own different solution. In America people go to church a lot, but I don't know if they're any more religious for all that. I know that there are many people who are convinced of life after death, but I haven't been given the capacity for belief."

"I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me."

"I love how when people watch I don’t know, David Attenborough or Discovery Planet type thing you know where you see the absolute phenomenal majesty and complexity and bewildering beauty of nature and you stare at it and then … somebody next to you goes, 'And how can you say there is no God? Look at that.' And then five minutes later you’re looking at the lifecycle of a parasitic worm whose job is to bury itself in the eyeball of a little lamb and eat the eyeball from inside while the lamb dies in horrible agony and then you turn to them and say, 'Yeah, where is your God now?' "

“I’m not a Christian person. I consider myself pantheist, agnostic, occasionally atheist, and a little bit Jewish, but mostly confused.”

PLAYBOY: Do you believe in an afterlife?
REDFORD: I'm not sure I do. I've explored every religion, some very deeply, enough to know there's not one philosophy that can satisfy me. Problems can't be solved with one way of thinking. If anything is my guide, nature is. That's where my spirituality is. I don't believe in organized religion, because I don't believe people should be organized in how they think, in what they believe. That has never been driven home as hard as with the [Bush] administration. When somebody thinks God speaks to him, you've got trouble. If God is speaking to the president, he's speaking with a forked tongue, because the behavior of this administration doesn't seem very godlike or spiritual. ... Is there an afterlife? As far as I know, this is it. It's all we’ve got. You take your opportunities and you go for it.

"I don’t believe in man-made religions. I don’t believe in man-made gods."

“I am a retired Christian.” 

“I’m so fed up with being told that I’m a bad person because I don’t subscribe to the same exact narrow views [Christians] have.” 

“I’m not religious, I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation. We need sex education in schools. Schools have to talk to kids from a young age about relationships, gay and straight.”

“And the next day the miracle occurred — crucifixion, resurrection, and he rose again from the dead and if he sees his shadow, another 2,000 years of guilt.”

"Let me tell you something. My child is not going to heaven or having an afterlife based on some man pouring water over her head."

“Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can’t buy any of it.”

“Yes. They say you die just a little bit when you sneeze. And I’m kind of an atheist, but yet I will say that just in case.”

“I admit that there are many gods in the world, and I’m happy that everybody has found something to believe in above themselves and organize some kind of morality around. But nature is my god, yes.”

“I think there is a puritanical wind that is blowing. I have never seen such a lack of separation between church and state in America.” 

“The tragedy is that every brain cell devoted to belief in the supernatural is a brain cell one cannot use to make life richer or easier or happier.”

“I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

“We are both strongly non-religious, and we have similar views on what's important in life.”

"I would also just like to point out that there are no scientists handing out any brochures on any street corners, hoping to convince people that their version of creation is actually true. The scientists are at the pub watching a sporting match of 'footie' whilst enjoying a pint with their mates. The difference between their relative confidence and your uncertainty, Bible-brochure-hander-outers, is that they can prove the facts of science (to put it very simply), and you can't prove the first phrase of your claims."

"It's always better to tell the truth. The truth doesn't hurt, and saying that, my mother only ever lied to me about one thing.  She said there was a God. But that's because when you're a working-class mum, Jesus is like an unpaid babysitter. She thought if I was God-fearing, then I'd be good."

"I follow no doctrine. I don't belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram."

James Lipton: Do you share House's skepticism?
Hugh Laurie: [laughing] I do. Big chunks of it, yes. I'm not a religious man. Again, I think this is connected to my father. My father was religious oddly enough, but I nonetheless I suppose was impressed by [and] enamored of his devotion to medical science. I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science."

"I’m going to tell you what my religion is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Terminato. Finito. I have no other religion. I feel very Jewish and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don’t believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion."

"I'm much more like the product of a doctor than I am a Jew. I don't believe in [an afterlife]. I believe this is it, and I believe it's the best way to live."

"I’m a Humanist because I believe that the cultural & religious identities that we construct for ourselves & their belief systems, although they may give us comfort, are illusionary. Morality & meaning come from seeing every human being as pure potential & of equal value."

"We are lucky enough to be living in a country that not only guarantees the freedom to practice religion as we see fit, but also freedom FROM religious zealots who would persecute and prosecute and even physically harm those of us who do not believe as they do. ... Predicating patriotism on a citizen's belief in God is as anti-American as judging him on the color of his skin. It is wrong. It is useless. It is unconstitutional." 

"For the people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn't need to be a God for me."

“Jane tried to convert me [to religion] and I tried to introduce her to Freud.”

"I am an atheist. But I don't think ['Creation' is] a film about atheism, I think it's a film about a man who became at least agnostic, as I think he always called himself. ... But for me, as an atheist, to have a viable alternative is incredibly important. The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful."

Matt Lauer: There have been calls from some religious groups. They wanted a disclaimer at the beginning of this movie saying it is fiction because, again, one of the themes in the book really knocks Christianity right on its ear. ... How would you all have felt if there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie? 
Ian McKellen: Well, I've often thought the bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie. Not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story. And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing after they've seen it.

"I’m not a religious person, nor am I an atheist. I’m more of an agnostic, really. But I was raised with Christian values by a Church of England mother to the amusement of my Jewish father and my ‘hovering Buddhist’ uncle George, who’d been in a Japanese concentration camp. I was told that I could choose my own religious beliefs ‘when I grew up.’ "

"There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away."

“I don't believe in heaven and hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life — the only thing I know to exist — to be wasted.”

"I took a comparative religion course when I was at university to get an overview, but it had no impact whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, Darwin has come up with the best theory of how, when and why we are here. Nothing else has convinced me otherwise."

"I don’t believe at all in God and I’m very relieved that I don’t."

"When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however."

"I was raised by my grandparents and my parents – my grandmother was a very religious Catholic, and my parents became born-again Christians later. So that was hardcore. It's very different than how [my children are] being raised. I was into God. I really went for it, man. … The further I got into it, it wasn't for me."

"I'm a Jewess through and through, although I'm not religious. I don't do anything intentionally to hurt anyone. I feel like I'm a good person. And that feels very Jewish to me."

"I'd like to thank the way I was raised for giving me enough knowledge about organized religion to make the adult decision to live the rest of my life without it. I don't think you can believe or not believe in anything unless you know a lot about it. I know Christianity, especially Catholicism, like the back of my hand. And my education has given me the freedom to know that it is completely absurd for me to believe it."

"I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now. It's an old cliché, I know, but it's mine. I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural. So far, at least. Not that I wouldn't like to."

“In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll's Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.”

“I think of God as the beauty in life. … It’s loving and being loved. It’s feeling good inside because you are living the life of a good person. Maybe it’s a good idea to try to start new ways of looking at the subject.”

"I'm an atheist; I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qu'ran, and I refute them."

"I think that the Bible as a system of moral guidance in the 21st century is insufficient, to put it mildly. I feel quite strongly that we need a new moral lodestone if we can't rely on what is inside our own selves."

"When one guy sees an invisible man he's a nut case. Ten people see him it's a cult. Ten million people see him it's a respected religion."

"That's all religion is — some principle you believe in. ... Man has accomplished far more miracles than the God he invented. What a tragedy it is to invent a God and then suffer to keep him King."

"A polyglot (10 languages, from Chinese to Swahili), he spoke out against man's inhumanity to man and utilized naturalistic rather than supernaturalistic terms in arguing his outlook."

“[When] the Constitution established a separation of church and state. That’s so important, because if you look at almost any religion, especially the major three, there is an oppression of women. I feel very lucky to be in a country with a more secular mindset.”

"When I was young, I embraced the Judeo-Christian concept of good and evil, and its corollary, that all of us were responsible for our deeds because of the choices we made. I don't believe this anymore."

Knightley: If 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.
David Cronenberg: Yeah, but you could always lie about being an atheist. I don't think an atheist could get elected in America right now.
Knightley: No, I don't think they could either.

"My belief system is that when this is over, it's over. That you don't look down from heaven and wait for your loved ones to join you."

MOMENT: Have you always been an atheist?
REINER: I became an atheist after Hitler came. I said, what is this? If there was a God, would he not be hearing 18 million people, 16 million Jews, or 20 million other people, saying,"Please God, don’t do this, make him stop?" God was so busy doing what? Striping zebras or fixing the long necks of giraffes?

“Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms. They were all very important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or volcanoes happened. Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology. But there are people who interpret the Bible literally. Literally! I choose not to believe that's the way.”

“[Buddhism] deals with the fact, in essence, you know, come right out and say it, that there is no God, that the individual is God.”

“My dad was a man of extremes. And the way my mom was raised, she followed her husband. So if God spoke to my father one day and said we were not supposed to have a TV in the house, it was suddenly gone. ... I was never frightened by it. I was more curious why I wasn’t feeling the real thing myself.”

"I am a Jew and an atheist. After my father died, I started to lose faith."

“I always say, ‘I don't believe in God, I believe in Al Pacino’ — and that's true.”

“I wish I believed I'd see my parents again, see my wife again. But I know it's not going to happen.”

"The day he left home [to fight in World War II], he remembers his mother and two sisters putting him on the train with the words, 'Thank God you've got your religion. You're going to need it now.' From that day, he says, he never went to Mass again. 'At home, you had to. Then, when I left the family, I stopped.' "

"I sometimes think love is God's way of hoodwinking people into having kids. You fall in love, and all that passion goes into procreating and wanting children. I've felt that need to want to raise a child. It's a creative urge. But you can express that creative urge in other ways."

“I'm an atheist. My mother is very religious, a churchgoer. She would often encourage me to go to church as well, but never forced it upon me, which I thought was quite decent of her. "

"There was no defining moment in which I decided there was no god for me. It was more of a growing process. I do feel that whatever religious beliefs I had as a child were foisted upon me. It's like when you ask where Grandma went when she died, and you'd be told that she went to heaven. I wouldn't necessarily view that as a bad thing, but it was stuff like that which I think hindered my intellectual development. Now that I've grown, I prefer a different interpretation.”

“As an atheist, I'd skip the prayer and go straight to the colonel, who is arguably the god of affordable, bucket housed fried chicken bits.”

“In the theory of evolution there is no talk of God and no Bibles are used. They're not looking for higher powers, extraterrestrials, or anything else that could be found in the science fiction section, because they are not dealing with fiction.” 

“There's an old saying that God exists in your search for him. I just want you to understand that I ain't looking.”

“I say I’m an atheist but I wouldn’t mind being visited by a ghost.”

“I was raised C.O.G.I.C., which is Church of God in Christ, a very conservative, very strict denomination of Christianity in the black community. I think all my neuroses come from having been religious. I hit a point of very studied agnosticism. I kind of like to believe in nothing and everything.”

"I never accepted religion so I had nothing to reject as such. The history of 'Christiansanity' (my own coinage of which I am proud!) is so brutal of mind, emotions, freedom, progress, science and all that I hold precious, that by any standards of justice its leaders in almost any given period would be incarcerated for life, or worse!"

"[Fields] regarded all religions with the suspicion of a seasoned con man."

“For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn’t go back.”

"My feelings on religion are starting to morph. I'm still very much an atheist, except that I don't necessarily see religion as being a bad thing. ... I'm almost saying certain people do better with religion, the way that certain rock stars do better if they're shooting heroin."

"Although never overtly religious, Newman said he chose to think of himself as Jewish because it was 'more challenging.' "