“All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.”

Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can it procure to its agents the marvellous faculty of having precise ideas of a god composed of so many contradictory qualities?

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Don’t say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.

The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.

The Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who breathes nothing but blood, murder, and carnage, and who demands that they should nourish him with the vapours of animals.

All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.

The source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.

The Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease his fury, to crucify his own son.

The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

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

These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.

Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.

The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power.

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

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

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.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which you understand not at all.