QUOTES FROM SECULARISTS
& POSITIVE ATHEISTS
"Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy."
-- Frank Zappa, speech to a pro-choice rally in Los Angeles around 1989-90.
"The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers."
-- Denis Diderot
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
-- Denis Diderot
"Le sens commun n'est pas si communî."
-- Voltaire
"The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahministic, or what not. Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder: Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon earth."
-- Emma Goldman, "The Philosophy of Atheism," in Goldman's Mother Earth journal, February, 1916.
"The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events."
-- Emma Goldman, "The Philosophy of Atheism," in Goldman's Mother Earth journal, February, 1916
"Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity -- the glorious heritage of the Inquisition."
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Playboy Interview (October, 1965).
"Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their lifestyle as follows. An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist thinks that heaven is something for which we should work for now - here on earth - for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, subdue and enjoy it. An Atheist thinks that only in knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.
Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to 'know' a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.
He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter. He knows that we are our brothers' keepers in that we are, first, keepers of our lives; that we are responsible persons, that the job is here and the time is now."
--Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Petitioners brief in Murray v. Curlett.
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