Thomas Paine Atheism Quotes & Sayings

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. — Thomas Paine

I don't know a greater advantage, than to appreciate the worth of an enemy. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous. — Thomas Paine

[T]his progress of the physical sciences, which the passions and interest do not interfere to disturb; wherein it is not thought that birth, profession, or appointment have given a right to judge what the individual is not in a situation to understand; this more certain progress cannot be observed, unless enlightened men shall search in the other sciences to bring them continually together. This progress at every step exhibits the model they ought to follow; according to which they may form a judgment of their own efforts, ascertain the false steps they may have taken, preserve themselves from pyrrhonism as well as credulity, and from a blind mistrust or too extensive submission to the authorities even of men of reputation and knowledge. — Marquis De Condorcet

I suppose I had these concerns but I really felt that I had to keep my scope very, very concentrated. — Atom Egoyan

I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected. — Georgia O'Keeffe

He respected them, and he hated them, and he knew the world would be lesser for their deaths. — Kiersten White

A man will pass better through the world with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected. — Thomas Paine

For he who is honest is noble, Whatever his fortunes or birth. — Alice Cary

If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually watching television and surfing the internet are really excellent practise for being dead. — Chuck Palahniuk

Even the great Thomas Paine, a friend to Franklin and Jefferson, repudiated the charge of atheism that he was not afraid to invite. Indeed, he set out to expose the crimes and horrors of the Old Testament, as well as the foolish myths of the New, as part of a vindication of god. No grand and noble deity, he asserted, should have such atrocities and stupidities laid to his charge. Paine's Age of Reason marks almost the first time that frank contempt for organized religion was openly expressed. It had a tremendous worldwide effect. His American friends and contemporaries, partly inspired by him to declare independence from the Hanoverian usurpers and their private Anglican Church, meanwhile achieved an extraordinary and unprecedented thing: the writing of a democratic and republican constitution that made no mention of god and that mentioned religion only when guaranteeing that it would always be separated from the state. — Christopher Hitchens

I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths. — Voltaire

Arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of god and those that demonstrate the ill effects of religion. It might be better if I broadened this somewhat, and said those that dispute the existence of an intervening god. Religion is, after all, more than the belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined. Defining matters in this way, I can allow myself to mention great critics such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, who perhaps paradoxically regarded religion as an insult to god. — Christopher Hitchens

The fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighborhood of the Holy. — C.S. Lewis

Work like a slave; order like a king; create like a god. — Constantin Brancusi

Your dressed as a waiter and I am dressed as a doctor so we are just as we live. — Tim Wayne

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism - a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade. — Thomas Paine

The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind. — Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty. — Andrew Jackson

The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal. — Thomas Paine

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors ... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! — Frederick Douglass

It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. — Thomas Paine

So slip on your goggles and your reading trunks, for the sun is high. Let me leave you with one more thought. In what season of the year do we find ourselves - I'm speaking for a moment in terms of the physical world - wading through things? Surf. Kelp. Books. Summer. — Roy Blount Jr.

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin. — Thomas Paine

Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don't have a plan. — Larry Winget

A.Q., Keyes remembered, stood for Asshole Quotient. Skip Wiley had a well-known theory that the quality of life declined in direct proportion to the Asshole Quotient. According to Wiley's reckoning, Miami had 134 total assholes per square mile, giving it the worst A.Q. in North America. In second place was Aspen, Colorado (101), with Malibu Beach, California, finishing third at 97. — Carl Hiaasen