Let's get a great collection of quotes together. Most of you are very sharp and well educated individuals; I bet we can put together a great wealth of wisdom. Feel free to quote yourself if you have a good one. I'll start it off.

"Perhaps ultimately, with the fulfillment of the creative process, finite personality will have served its purpose and become one with the eternal reality, but we do not at present need to know that final future. What we need to know is how to live now. This is the way of love, witnessed by the saints and mystics of all the great traditions." --John Hick

"I am dogmatically undogmatic, or at least I try to be." --Jokerthief

"It would almost be unbelievable, if history did not record the tragic fact that, men have gone to war and cut each others throats because they could not agree as to what becomes of them after their throats were cut."

-Walter P. Stacey

Just read that for the first time yesterday Pooter, I thought it was well played.

All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties.

-- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871), quoted from Emma Goldman, "The Philosophy of Atheism" (1916)

If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.

-- Dan Barker, paraphrasing an article by Ben Bova titled "Equal Time for Creationism," about the question of whether Adam and Eve were historical, which helped Barker to see through religion, in Richard von Busack, "Heretical Animals" (October 3-9, 2002: Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper)

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 potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

-- Richard Dawkins, the opening words of Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity," of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

This next section is dedicated to Robert G Ingersoll, a man very ahead of his time.

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Crumbling Creeds"

The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith."

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, The Gods

It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Which Way?" (1884)

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Orthodoxy" (1884)

It is told that the great Angelo, in decorating a church, painted some angels wearing sandals. A cardinal looking at the picture said to the artist: "Whoever saw angels with sandals?" Angelo answered with another question: "Whoever saw an angel barefooted?"

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, from "Superstition" (1898)

Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Individuality" (1873)

Twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Answering The New York Ministers"

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides." - Carl Sagan

A true believer ... must also claim to have at least an inkling of what that Supreme Being desires. I have been called arrogant in my time ... but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator — that’s beyond my conceit.

— Christopher Hitchens (attributed: source unknown)

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer

The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.

― Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

― Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs).

- Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

― Christopher Hitchens

I'm really glad to see this thread. I left the net for a few months and have been doing a lot of reading in literature, and making a quote list when I found something I liked. I actually thought about starting a thread like this - maybe it could be made a sticky. Let me start with a bit of humor:

Austen: Emma

Welcome back.

Thanks - really enjoyed the vacation - lots of novels read and other things done.

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87 percent of the population) claiming to "never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl -- once in a million years -- casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.

-- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation pp 51-2

The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

-- Sam Harris - The End of Faith (2004), page 25

We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature.

Sam Harris - Debate with Reza Aslan (2007)

It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves- socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically.

Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), page xii

If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a "moral commandment" is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

-- Ayn Rand: John Galt's radio address in Atlas Shrugged

If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.... The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves -- or whether it should be ours here and now and on this Earth.

-- Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged (1957), page 735 (hardback), page 684 (paperback)

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it with its skeptical protocols is the pathway to a dark age.

-- Carl Sagan, sound clip from CSICOP

If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address

If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote.... Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, page 204

Eratosthenes's only tools were sticks, eyes, feet, and brains; plus a zest for experiment. With those tools he correctly deduced the circumference of the Earth, to high precision, with an error of only a few percent. That's pretty good figuring for 2200 years ago.

-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos television series, quoted from The Carl Sagan Electronic Monument

It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

-- Carl Sagan, quoted from John Stear, No Answers in Genesis

"We do not possess imagination enough to sense what we are missing."

- Jean Toomer

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

"For God is ultimately one, and that means that each of us is part of that oneness. 'My me is indeed God.' The mystics are right. They are people of a deeper consciousness. There is one consciousness, but self-conscious people alone can know it. I am finite, but I share in infinity. I am mortal, but I share in immortality. I am a being, but I share in being itself."

--John Shelby Spong

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.

- Benjamin Franklin

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.
-The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968, p. 420

"The multitude, ever prone to superstition, and caring more for the shreds of antiquity than for eternal truths, pays homage to the Books of the Bible, rather than to the Word of God." --Spinoza

95% of our energy is spent protecting, defending and maintaining our self-image and it isn't real, it's only an image — sheer imagination. --Roberto Assagioli

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

- Aleister Crowley

And some Blake for you:

God appears and god is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.


To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.


The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.

Everyone can know the truth--everyone--if they simply allow themselves to go beyond their conditioned persona.

--Burt Harding

"There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition."

-- Blaise Pascal

"It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything."

-- G.K. Chesterton

"While sitting on the bank of a river one day, I picked up a solid round stone from the water and broke it open. It was perfectly dry in spite of the fact that it had been immersed in water for centuries. The same is true of many people in the Western world. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity; they live immersed in the waters of its benefits. And yet it has not penetrated their hearts; they do not love it. The fault is not in Christianity, but in men's hearts, which have been hardened by materialism and intellectualism."

Sadhu Sundar Singh

"If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts - i.e. of materialism and astronomy - are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."

-- C.S. Lewis

Man that is beautiful. I knew you guys would have some gems.