When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms, always be sure to ask which set. It works every time.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

New York is definitely ready for the word of God.

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

God always wants us to be growing.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

I don’t call myself a Buddhist. I’m a free spirit. I believe I’m here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that’s my religion.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race – racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic – what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don’t think God categorizes sins.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

Our God is a forgiving God.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.

I’m actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

Religion is just mind control.

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews – everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

Tourism is a very big economic benefit to the Sherpa people, and also, they have very strong ties to their own social attitudes and their own religion, so fortunately, they’re not too influenced by many of our Western attitudes.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

Start your week off right by getting back to what is really important – honoring God.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.