“A heretic, my dear sir, is a fellow who disagrees with you regarding something neither of you knows anything about.”

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.

When nations are to perish in their sins, ’tis in the Church the leprosy begins.

To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes, is easier than to think.

Blest be the art that can immortalize,–the art that baffles time’s tyrannic claim to quench it.

Far happier are the dead methinks than they who look for death and fear it every day.

No traveler e’er reached that blest abode who found not thorns and briers in his road.

Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.

Would I describe a preacher, I would express him simple, grave, sincere; In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste,

Unless a love of virtue light the flame,

War’s a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

Restraining prayer, we cease to fight; Prayer keeps the Christian’s armor bright; And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.

Built God a church and laughed His word to scorn.

All we behold is miracle.

Still ending, and beginning still.

The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.

The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.

If there is no God or no evidence of God and certainly no evidence of a very morally engaged god, then whatever has to be done has to be done by us.

I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.

The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose – and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it.

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don’t find them believable.