The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
– Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel
via Atheist Quotes on Facebook
Yet think she must; she knew at last the number on the dreadful door of fantasy, the threshold to the escape that was no escape; she knew that for her the greatest sin now and in the future was to delude herself. It had been a long lesson but she had learned it. Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
– My favourite passage from Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain
There can be no true freedom so long as religion still keeps the human mind in shackles.
- Paula Kirby
via Atheist Quotes on Facebook
Arg! Despite the fact that I saved repeatedly while putting together my last post, somehow an older version was posted. I had to go back and make all the little changes again. Sigh. I guess it’s not as frustrating as losing an entire post (which I’ve done before). Don’t sweat the small stuff, right?
Here’s your quote for today:
“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on.”
Christopher Hitchens
via Atheist Quotes on Facebook
“It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty.”
Steve Allen
via Atheist Quotes of the Day on Facebook
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Lewis Carroll
Through The Looking Glass
(Found in And I Quote: The Definitive Collection of Quotes, Sayings, and Jokes for the Contemporary Speechmaker)
A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy’s feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight . . . Indeed the presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that energy needed in other areas has been channeled away from them.
Allen Shawn
From Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
“You pray to your god, I’ll pray to a cabbage, and I bet we’ll get the same result.”
– Barbara Jean Price
via Atheist Quotes of the Day on Facebook
