Famous Atheists, Freethinkers, Deists and Agnostics - from FreeThinkers of Ventura County
This compilation of quotes, from some of the worlds greatest thinkers, gives me hope that our battle is just. There is a chance that some day the realities of Science will overcome the obscurities of Theology.
Of Time Life?s 100 most influential people of the Millennium, this list includes 19 of them, and 5 are in the top 10.

Abraham Lincoln

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

- Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).
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Albert Einstein

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism."

"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

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

-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist
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Aldous Huxley

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough."

-Aldous Huxley, author "Roots"
Andrew Carnegie
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"I donâ??t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life."

- Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist
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Isaac Asimov

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."

"Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night"

-Isaac Asimov, Russian-born - American author
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Ernest Hemingway

"All thinking men are atheists."

On page 144 of Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals, it states that despite being raised in a strict Congregationalist household, Ernest "did not only not believe in God but regarded organized religion as a menace to human happiness", "seems to have been devoid of the religious spirit", and "ceased to practice religion at the earliest possible moment."
Other's have pointed out that Hemingway used the non-existence of God as a theme in his books.

- Ernest Hemingway, American author (1899-1961).

Arthur C. Clarke
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"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him."

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?"

Arthur C. Clarke, author
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Charles Darwin

From the age of forty he was, to use his own words, a complete dis-believer in Christianity. He professed himself an Agnostic, regarding the problem of the universe as beyond our solution, "For myself," he wrote, "I do not believe in any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."
"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic."

"It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science." [Quoted in How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science by Michael Shermer.

Charles Robert Darwin, English naturalist (1809-1882).
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Ayn Rand

"Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge. "

-Ayn Rand, Russian-born author (1905-1982).
(The Fountainhead)
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Benjamin Franklin

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."

-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor
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Dave Matthews

"I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world."

-Dave Matthews, South African rock musician
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Carl Sagan

"My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic."

-Carl Sagan, American astronomer and author
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Bertrand Russell

"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race."

"Fear is the parent of cruelty, therefore it is no wonder if religion and cruelty have gone hand-in-hand."

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting."

"I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out."

- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathematician, and social critic (1872-1970).
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Billy Joel

"I wasn't raised Catholic, but I used to go to Mass with my friends, and I viewed the whole business as a lot of very enthralling hocus-pocus. There's a guy hanging upon the wall in the church, nailed to a cross and dripping blood, and everybody's blaming themselves for that man's torment, but I said to myself, 'Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. Thereâ??s no blood of any sacred martyr on my hands. I pass on all of this."

"I believe that all important matters have to be settled here, not in the clouds somewhere after we kick off."

-Billy Joel, American musician
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Clarence Darrow

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment, to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure. "

"I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I donâ??t believe in either. I donâ??t believe in God as I donâ??t believe in Mother Goose."

- Clarence Seward Darrow, American lawyer (1857-1938). (Scopes Monkey Trail- Creationism in schools)
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"Religion is just mind control."

- George Carlin, comedian
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Elizabeth Cady-Stanton

"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion."

"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation."

"The bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire...Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up."

She wrote of the Bible, "I found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. Surely the writers had a very low idea of the nature of their god. They made him not only anthropomorphic, but of the very lowest type, jealous and revengeful, loving violence rather than mercy. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of women." [Women Without Superstition]

- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American suffragist (1815-1902).
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Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire"

"Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror."

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world."

"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense." [Philosophical Dictionary, 1764]
"Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil." [Philosophical Dictionary, 1764]

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

Perhaps never really an atheist, nonetheless, Voltaire changed late in life into a fearless crusader against religious cruelty and injustice. In Voltaireâ??s time it was forbidden to be an Atheist. Admitting to be one, brought the death sentence. Hence he was a Deist for most of his life.

- Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright (1694-1778).
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Frank Zappa

"If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine- but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good- and CARES about any of it- to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working. "

-Frank Zappa, American musician
Galileo Galilei
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"They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit."

-Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer
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Freidrich Nietzsche

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."

"So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is truth?"

"The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, a self-derision, and self-mutilation."

"All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race â?? before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its God to be truthful and understandable in his communications."

"The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God."

"There is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear therefore nothing any more."

- Friedrich Nietzsche, German philologist and philosopher (1844-1900).
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Gene Roddenberry

"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."

-Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek (1921-1991).
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George Bernard Shaw

"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."

"At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world."

- George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright (1856-1950).
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Arthur Rubenstein, Polish-American pianist (1886-1982).
During a radio interview with Rubenstein the conversation took a sharp turn away from music when the interviewer suddenly asked, "Mr. Rubenstein, do you believe in God?" Rubenstein calmly replied, "No. You see, what I believe in is something much greater."
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Gloria Steinam

"By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God."

"It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous."

-Gloria Steinam, women's rights activist
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Helen Keller

"There is so much in the bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much so that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention."

-Helen Keller, American lecturer
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James Madison, American president and political theorist (1751-1836).

"In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."

"What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy."

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
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John Adams, U.S. President, Founding Father of the United States

"Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?"

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."

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

"The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known."

- John Stuart Mill, English philosopher and economist (1806-1873). Freethinker, if not strictly atheist.
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Karl Marx

"The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people."

"The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille."

- Karl Marx, German political philosopher and economist (1818-1883).
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Leo Tolstoy

"To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege."

-Leo Tolstoy, Russian revolutionary
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Marilyn Manson

"Who wants to go to Heaven with all those asshole angels?"

-Marilyn Manson, American rock musician
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Kurt Vonnegut

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."

-Kurt Vonnegut, American author
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Napoleon Bonaparte

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

"All religions have been made by men."

-Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
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Dr. James Watson

"I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose' but I'm anticipating a good lunch."

-Dr. James Watson, American biologist, (Discoverer of DNA.)
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Frank Zappa, American musician (1940-1993).
"Who you jivin' with that cosmic debris?"
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be."
"If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine -- but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good -- and CARES about any of it -- to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working." [The Real Frank Zappa Book, ("Church and State" chapter) by Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso, p. 301]
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Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian statesman (1889-1964).
A self-professed atheist, he said of India, "No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress." [Key Ideas in Human Thought]
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James Joyce, Irish author (1882-1941).
Joyce rejected Catholicism and indeed all religion when he was a young man (as portrayed in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). He considered Catholicism to be "black magic", and deplored its anti-individuality. "For me there is only one alternative to scholasticism, skepticism." He also rejected the church's moralizing, etc. etc.
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Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken, American editor and critic (1880-1956).
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the same extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility." ["Treatise on the Gods"]
"Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings."
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. . . . A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill."
"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters." [from the alt. quotations archive, found from http://www.starlingte...]
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." [1925]
"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
"For centuries, theologians have attempted to explain the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."
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John Lennon, British musician (1940-1980).
Lennon rejected religion and dogma, but he was not really an atheist - he espoused a sort of vague spirituality.

From the song "Imagine"
"Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, imagine all the people Living for today. . .
Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too ."

From the song, "God,"
"God is a concept By which we measure Our pain
I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-Ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in Tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus"

And, from the song, "I Found Out"
"There ain't no Jesus gonna come from the sky Now that I found out I know I can cry, I found out! "
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Walter "Walt" Disney, American cartoonist, showman, and film producer (1901-1966).
I had one report that Disney was non-religious. Apparently, he was not a member of any religion and did not attend services. Also, he apparently had an entirely secular funeral. It was "very private" and off-limits to the press, perhaps to conceal it was not religious. There is no "In God we Trust" on Disney Dollars!
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Olof Palme, Swedish prime minister (1927-1986).
Palme is said to be partly responsible for the current state of wide-spread disbelief in Sweden. He had conflicts with the Church of Sweden during his administration, because he wished to separate it completely from the state. He said, "human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them."
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Margaret Sanger, American birth control activist, founder of Planned Parenthood (1883-1966).
"No Gods, No Masters."
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Frank Lloyd Wright

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

-Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect (1869-1959).
Denis Diderot
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"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

-Denis Diderot, French philosopher, author, and encyclopedist (1713-1784).
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Sir Alfred Hitchcock, British film director (1899-1980).
I have heard that in later life, Hitchcock become areligious. If you have any information on his beliefs, please let me know. Here is an anecdote that may illustrate his growing anti-religious sentiments. (Though at the time he was apparently still a church-going Catholic.)
Driving through a Swiss city one day, Hitchcock suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." His companion was surprised to see nothing more alarming that a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the child's shoulder. "Run, little boy," cried Hitchcock, leaning out of the car. "Run for your life!"
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Karl Popper, Austrian/British philosopher (1902-1994).
He was the author of such well-known works as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Open Society and Its Enemies, The Poverty of Historicism, Conjectures and Refutations, and many others. He was particularly influential in the philosophy of science for his defense of fallibilism and his critique of induction. Popper described himself as an agnostic, and he was a member of the Academy of Humanism.
The magazine, Skeptic Vol. 6, No. 2 (1998) features a 1969 interview with Karl Popper - "Karl Popper On God: The Lost Interview" by Edward Zerin. In this interview Popper discusses his agnosticism, his attitudes towards both Judaism and Christianity, the reasons for his disbelief which he combined with a respect for the moral teachings of both religions.
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Richard Burton, Welsh actor (1925-1984).
According to the Denver Post, Richard Burton wrote this in his diary in 1969: "The more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and his murderous envious scatological soul, the more I realize that he will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will change it. The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same lusts wheel endlessly around the parade ground of the centuries. Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a god of some kind but I simply cannot."
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Irving Berlin, Russian-born American lyricist and composer (1888-1989).
In her biography of her father, Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir, Mary Ellin Barrett mentions her father's "agnosticism," (p.123) and refers to him as a "nonbeliever," (p.124)
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George Orwell (1903-1950).
Orwell's biography calls him an atheist. His books also have themes that are explicitly and/or suggestively anti-religious. In Animal Farm, the parody was a raven named Moses who told the animals stories about a great mountain in the sky that they would go to when they died, called Sugar Candy Mountain. In 1984, the concept of Big Brother is a parody of God: You never see him, but the fact of him is drilled into so many people's minds that they become robots, almost. Plus, if you speak bad against Big Brother, it's a Thoughtcrime.
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Robert A. Heinlein, American science-fiction author (1907-1988).
Being a fiction author, all Heinlein left us is quotations from characters in his novels. There are lots to choose from, here are a couple from Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love:
"History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."
"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent."
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William M. Gaines, American publisher (1922-1992).
Founder and publisher of Mad magazine. He was quite definitely an atheist, according to Frank Jacobs's biography, The MAD World of William M. Gaines. When emphasizing his sincerity, Gaines would declare, "On my honor as an atheist . . ." Also, when long-time contributor Dave Berg would greet him with "May God give you his blessing," Gaines would politely reply, "Dave, shut the hell up!"
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Charles Schultz, American cartoonist (1922-2000).
In an interview in 1999, Schultz said that although his philosophical views evolved over the years, "the term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist.'" He went on to say, "I despise those shallow religious comics. Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show him praying--I just can't stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he'd done during the day. I don't think Hank Ketcham [Dennis' creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that." Schultz cringed at the mention of Family Circus, the strip by Bill Keane that is strewn with cutesy references to Jesus (who wants to protect children on school buses, but can't because of laws about separation of church and state!) and those sickly-sweet images of invisible deceased grandparents looming protectively over the kids. "Oh, I can't stand that," Schultz laughed. "You could get diabetes reading them, couldn't you?"
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Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain"

"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."

"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian."

"It (the Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows."

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light â?¦ by contrast."

"I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force."

"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."

"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

"Man is a marvelous curiosity . . . he thinks he is the Creator's pet . . . he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." [Letters from the Earth]

Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

- Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist (1835-1910).
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