Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.

Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.

Just because you believe in something does not mean that it is true.

Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.

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.

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.

A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‘Why god? Why me?’ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‘There’s just something about you that pisses me off.’

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

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.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

God has no religion.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell “God” with the wrong blocks.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven….The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Religion is a by-product 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?

The clergy … believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are any miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body’s own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose’ of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers.

Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

There’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.

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