God Delusion Quotes:

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

- George Bernard Shaw

topic: Life, Atheist, Beer, Credulity, Just Believe

A person isn't considered insane if there are a number of people who believe the same way. Insanity isn't supposed to be a communicable disease. If one other person starts to believe him, or maybe two or three, then it's a religion.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals". Book by Robert Pirsig, 1991.

topic: God, Atheist, People, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Anti God

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

- Richard Dawkins

source: Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Atheist, Hate, Jealous, Anti Religious, Organized Religion

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think...

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Thinking, Religion, Atheism, Lack Of Faith, Evidence Of God

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Funny, Trust, Laughter, Closed Mind, Discernment

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Children, Mind, Vulnerable, Innocent Children, God Delusion

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

- Douglas Adams

source: Punch 23 May 1917 "Fairies"

topic: Beauty, Beautiful, Atheist, Subtle Atheist, Daily Atheist

God was created by evolution, inside the imagination of a primate.

- Steve Fowler

topic: Honesty, Imagination, Evolution, Primates, God Delusion

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

- Richard Dawkins

source: "The Two Types of Faith" by Greg Cootsona, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 17, 2016.

topic: Death, Atheist, Learning, Atheistic, Religion In Society

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Existence, Boldness, Evidence Of God, Theism, World Religions

A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Design, Religion, Atheism, God Delusion

The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Christian, Character, Religion, Capricious, Anti Religious

To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Biblical, Editors, Evil, Anthology, God Delusion

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: God, Christian, Atheist, Subtle Atheist, Daily Atheist

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Meaningful, Atheist, Responsibility, Infantile, Presumption

If people are good because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

- Albert Einstein

topic: Im Sorry, Atheist, Fear, Science Religion, Morality And Religion

THE MAJORITY of children born into the world tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents, and that to me is one of the most regrettable facts of them all

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Children, Parent, Religion, God Delusion

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

- Richard Dawkins

source: River Out of Eden ch. 4 (1995)

topic: Funny, Sarcastic, Atheist, Philosophy Of Religion, Creation And Evolution

Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.

- Richard Dawkins

source: Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.347, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Evil, Religion, Atheism, God Delusion

We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

- Richard Dawkins

source: Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

topic: Lucky, Sahara, Evolution, Ordinariness, God Delusion

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, out number the sand grains in the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here. The number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist... we are privileged to be alive and nd we should make the most of our time on this world.

- Richard Dawkins

source: Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

topic: Inspirational, Thinking, Order, Sahara, Privileged

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

- Steven Weinberg

source: "Behaving Badly? Stop Using Religion as an Excuse!" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 2, 2014.

topic: God, Atheist, People, Anti Religious, Theism

So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Atheist, Father, Science, Evidence Of God, Wagers

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

- John Adams

topic: Religious, Insightful, Liberty, Anti Religious, Founding

Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear... Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision.

- Thomas Jefferson

source: Thomas Jefferson's letter to Peter Carr, founders.archives.gov. August 10, 1787.

topic: Decision, Heaven, Mind, Questioning Beliefs, Weak Minds

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

topic: Atheist, People, Religion, Morality And Religion, Religion And Politics

I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.

- A.J. Ayer

topic: Believe, Thinking, Answers, Positivism, Non Believer

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Selfish, Philosophical, Generosity, Altruism, God Delusion

Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid,’ let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Children, Mind, Different, Incompatibility, Different Faiths

Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.

- Groucho Marx

topic: Fall, Brain, Open Minded, Gullibility, Keep An Open Mind

The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Faith, Religious, Liberty, God Delusion

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Religion, Libertarian, Weapons, Trinity, Abracadabra

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

- H. L. Mencken

topic: Beautiful, Respect, Atheist, Theism, Minority Report

A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!

- Richard Dawkins

source: Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.184, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Atheist, Simple, People, Bandwidth, God Delusion

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.

- Albert Einstein

source: "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear" by James Randerson, www.theguardian.com. May 13, 2008.

topic: Atheist, Science, Expression, God Does Exist, Science Religion

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Running, Animal, Years, God Delusion, Natural World

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

- Richard Dawkins

source: "Has the world changed?". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2001.

topic: Science, People, Religion, September 11th, God Delusion

...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Lying, Views, Opposites, God Delusion, Two Opposites

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.

- George H. W. Bush

topic: Atheist, Religion, Citizens, One Nation Under God, Christian Atheist

The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Real, Latin, Mean, God Delusion

I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: Humanity, Understanding, May, God Delusion

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

- Terry Eagleton

source: "This milquetoast consensus is unnerved by radical faith" by Tristram Hunt, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2007.

topic: Book, Ideas, Bird, God Delusion

Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.

- Richard Dawkins

source: Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: World, Details, Culture, Factual, God Delusion