I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish – where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source – where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials – and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all ... I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end – where all men and all churches are treated as equal – where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice ... I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office ... I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. John F Kennedy, September 1960
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. Senator Barry Goldwater
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? – because you’re not!’ Douglas Adams
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously. Douglas Adams
Although it must be acknowledged that a great deal of good has been done in the name of religion, it is by far the saddest and most tragic aspect of religion that throughout history more men, women and children have been slaughtered, tortured and mutilated because of religious beliefs than all the people who have died in all of history’s secular or non-religious wars. Derek Partridge, The Naked Truth
Let me make this very clear, underlined, in five colors, with a spotlight bathing it in light: The United States of America, according to the founders, was not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion, and this fact is in the Constitution ... Article 6 of the US Constitution made this treaty doubly binding by saying this: ‘All treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States shall be bound thereby, anything in the laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding’. William Edelson, on Treaty of Tripoli
Art and Religion are then two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind. Clive Bell, 1881-1964, English art critic
Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to ‘God’ to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare to dishonor my Creator’s name by [attaching] it to this filthy book. Men and books lie. Only nature does not lie. Thomas Paine
Any system of religion that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. ibid.
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. ibid.
The adulterous connection between church and state. ibid.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter. ibid.
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith. Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Persecution is not an original feature of any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. ibid.
All national institutions of Churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolise power and profit. Thomas Paine
From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua 1864
This is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No. ibid.
Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. ibid.
The all-corroding, all-dissolving skepticism of the intellect in religious enquiries. ibid.
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal
In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the question at issue, but have taken them at second hand from other non-examiners whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. Mark Twain, Autobiography
There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory as it is – in our country particularly and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree – it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime - the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled. ibid.
Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code. Mark Twain, A Biography
The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one’s religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life – hence it is a valuable possession to him. ibid.
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. Mark Twain, The Lowest Animal
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s. Mark Twain
Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, and wishes he was certain. Mark Twain, notebook 1879
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force. ibid.
Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion. Mark Twain, Following the Equator
I have a religion – but you will call it blasphemy. It is that there is a God for the rich man but none for the poor ... Perhaps your religion will sustain you, will feed you – I place no dependence in mine. Our religions are alike, though, in one respect – neither can make a man happy when he is out of luck. Mark Twain, letter to Orion Clemens 1865
The religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide ... Every influx of atheism, of scepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth. Ralph Waldo Emerson