“It annoys me that the burden of proof is on us. It should be: ‘You came up with the idea. Why do you believe it?’ I could tell you I’ve got superpowers. But I can’t go up to people saying ‘Prove I can’t fly.’ They’d go: ‘What do you mean ‘Prove you can’t fly?’ Prove you can!”
~Ricky Gervais

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”
~Plutarch

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
~Thomas Jefferson

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

“Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil. But why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?”
~Arthur C. Clarke

“If there’s one thing I hate more than prophecy, it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.”
~Bill Maher

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
~Arthur C. Clarke

“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing age and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”

  • Abraham Lincoln

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
~James Madison

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
~Ben Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1758.

“The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
~Abraham Lincoln

“What are the fruits of Christianity? Superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
~James Madison, 4th president of the U.S.

“This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.”
~John Adams, 2nd president of the U.S.

“Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“In no instance have…the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.”
~James Madison

“The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
~John Adams

“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”
~Benjamin Franklin

Lincoln’s first law partner, John T. Stuart, said of him: “He was an avowed and open infidel, and sometimes bordered on atheism. He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I have ever heard.”

“Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretense, infringed.”
~James Madison (Original wording of the First Amendment; Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).)

“It has been fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and then I considered it merely the ravings of a maniac.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.”
~Thomas Paine

“In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it.”
~Benjamin Franklin

“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 monopolize power and profit.”
~Thomas Paine