“I have a particular faith, I describe myself as a Jewish atheist. I’m Jewish by birth origin and it’s part of who I am. I don’t believe in God, but I think faith is a really important thing for a lot of people."

“Personally, I would like to see the prayers gone. I’m an atheist. I don’t want to say the prayers. If others want to say the prayers they’re open to do that. Personally I would like to see them gone but again it’s not something I can decree. It’s a view of the Senate.”

"[H]e was a dedicated atheist. Imagine, he was senator for over thirty years in Oklahoma, a hotbed of the Lord Jesus, and they never found out. He never tried to hide it."

“Petronius was surely right in saying 'fear made the gods.' In primitive times fear of the unknown was normal; gratitude to an unknown was impossible.”

"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."

"For a century and a half, then, after Jesus' death, we have no means whatever of substantiating even the existence of the Gospels, as now bound up in the New Testament. There is a perfect blank of 140 years; and a most serious one it is."

“The emancipation of the mind from religious superstition is as essential to the progress of civilization as is emancipation from physical slavery.”

“Religion is declining, with no better proof than I am here today. Two hundred years ago, I would have been burned at the stake. What was considered heresay [sic] by our fathers is tolerated now. The hell that frightened us in childhood has vanished into space. Heaven is not in our geographies. Therefore, we see the old faiths losing their hold on the human mind.”

"He published translations from Sanskrit and also Danish versions of Isaiah (1902), Psalms (1905), Job, and Ecclesiastes (1907). However, he openly professed atheism and had no connection with Jewish affairs."

“I was a woman, a divorcee, a socialist, an agnostic ... all possible sins together.”

“I maintain that thoughtful Atheism affords greater possibility for human happiness than any system yet based on, or possible to be founded on, Theism, and that the lives of true Atheists must be more virtuous — because more human — than those of the believers in Deity, the humanity of the devout believer often finding itself neutralized by a faith with which that humanity is necessarily in constant collision."

“He who created God is a fool, he who propagates God is a scoundrel, and he who worships God is a barbarian.”

"Don't you know that mankind is an Ass pure & simple & for all the use they make of their brains in matters of religion they [may] as well have none."

“There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me ... that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are?”

"Clerical influence also turned against him as a result of his radically secular ideas about government."

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."

“My parents and grandparents — all of them Jews — went through huge trauma. They went through the trauma of the Holocaust. I don't know if it's for that reason that, by 1965, when I was born, my grandparents, who were alive, my parents were secular. But I've grown up in a secular way. I've thought about this, and I'm an atheist.”

"As an elected official, I know the difference between theology and politics. My interest is in legislation, not salvation."

“Dear Friends, Man has created God; not God man. Yours ever, Garibaldi.”

"Because I’m in a privileged position in so many ways, it’s even more important that I speak out and be open about being an atheist and a secular humanist. Anyone who has that privilege can use it to help people understand that being nonreligious is a pretty common thing."

“I reject the whole Christian religion [and] a presiding or controlling Deity.”

“I still have not been able to believe in God.”

"I am an atheist because I’ve found no faith in any deity from Thor to Zeus. I am so grateful for the work the people in this room have done to advance the separation of state and church, to educate communities, to build a culture that made it possible for me, as a state legislator from Arizona, to talk honestly about what I do and don’t believe in."

"I've never been a person of faith, so it wasn't a big deal for me to just be who I am."

"The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful."

“All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.”

"When Neil Kinnock spoke about his atheism, he was monstered, as if this were evidence of his otherness. In fact, he was at the vanguard of a growing secularist trend."

"Civil governments should not have religion, because it is their duty to protect the freedom that the governed have to practice the religion they like to adopt; they would not faithfully fill that duty if they were sectarians of any."

"Mr. Cook had been an avowed atheist, who would, in the normal course of events, have steered well clear of organised religion."

"We aim in the domain of politics at Republicanism, in the domain of economics at Socialism, and in the domain of what is today called religion at Atheism."

"Members of Congress are asked all the time about their religion, and you can get away with ducking the question. You can hide behind ambiguous labels like 'non-denominational,' but something in my conscience was gnawing at me for not just telling the truth."

"We need to defend the line of separation between church and state. We need to support responsible public policies based on facts and science and reason and, of course, we need to defeat the War on Festivus."

"The American politicians have a ridiculous moral argument. They teach children and the public to believe in God because in their opinion the existence of God is necessary to assure justice in their own country and in the world. Their fear issues and beliefs in a defined Hell are the other half of the argument. Why should you and I, good respectable Scandinavian human beings, be punished in a Hell?"

“[A] foundation free from the influence of clergy.”

“I’m not a converted Catholic. I’m still a nonbeliever, even though my idea of reason is the idea of a reason which is open to mystery.” 

BBC: Do you believe in God?
CLEGG: No. ... I am not an active believer.