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Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations

John Marshall Harlan (1899-1971)
United States Supreme Court justice

One man's vulgarity is another's lyric.
-- John Marshall Harlan, quoted from Floyd College, Rome, Georgia,”Banned Books--Quotes"

Rev William R Harper
Curate of St John's Episcopal Church, Larchmont, NY

The majority has no right to impose its religion on the rest. That's a tradition as sacred as the Constitution itself to this country.
-- Rev William R Harper, Gannett Westchester newspaper, December 20, 1986, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

I left the Catholic Church almost thirty years ago. It is relevant to my present attitudes that even though I rejected the Church ... I clearly remain a "cultural Catholic," much as an atheist Jew is culturally Jewish.... I am, then, what George Simmel called a "religious nature without religion," a pious man of deep faith, but not in the supernatural.
-- Michael Harrington, The Politics at God's Funeral, 1983, from James A. Haught, Ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902)
American short-story writer; US consul in Glasgow, Scotland

The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.
-- Bret Harte, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A. Haught, Ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.
-- Former Sen. Mark Hatfield, quoted in the pamphlet “Christian Reconstruction: God’s Glorious Millennium?” by Paul Thibodeau

During a recent evolution showdown, a visiting "creation scientist" from California repeatedly challenged me to debate, because I support the teaching of evolution. A Charleston talk radio host blistered me on the air because I would not come on his show and quarrel with the creationist professor.
     But I felt it would be silly for me to argue about his supernatural beliefs. After all, I would not debate a Scientologist who asserts that all human souls are "thetans" from another planet. And I would not quarrel with a Unification Church member's claim that Jesus appeared to Master Moon and told him to convert all people as "Moonies". And I would not dispute a Mormon's belief that Jesus visited prehistoric America. And so on, and so on.
     Let them all believe whatever they want. It is pointless to go on radio shows and wrangle over mystical claims. However, such claims must not be imposed on captive children in government-owned schools. That is prohibited by the separation of church and state, a core principle in the First Amendment in America's Bill of Rights.
-- James A Haught, "The Evolution Debate is about Honesty," Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, reprinted in the National Center for Science Education (May-June, 2000, issue) ††

Judith Hayes
American columnist, atheistic writer

[I]t wouldn't matter if every single President since Washington had been a Bible-toting, evangelical Christian. They weren't, of course, but even if they had been, it still would not change the secular foundation of our republic. Christians like to quote various Presidents or Supreme Court Justices who (quite incorrectly) have referred to our "Christian nation." But what do those quotes prove? I could quote Richard Nixon, but would that prove that ours was intended to be a nation of crooks?
-- Judith Hayes, Columnist, Atheist"All Those Christian Presidents" (1997)

We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion suffer by all such interference.
-- Pres. Rutherford B Hayes, Statement as Governor of Ohio, 1875, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Charles C Haynes
First Amendment Center senior scholar

If the aim is to keep “Christ” in the shopping-mall Christmas or to ensure that pagan trees and mistletoe don’t lose their Christian labels, then it might make sense to attack presidents and business owners who commit the “happy holiday” sin. But if the goal is to restore the religious meaning of the Christian holy day, then they are aiming at the wrong Target.
-- Charles C Haynes, “To Save Christmas, separate Christ from Christmas. December 25, 2005); the word Target is capitalized as part of a subtle comment about the Target chain of stores in that Evangelical Christians boycotted Target and other stores for (get this) displaying the slogan "Happy Holidays"

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.
-- William Hazlitt, English essayist "On the Clerical Character," Political Essays, (1819), from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
-- William Hazlitt, "Common Places," no. 76, in Literary Examiner (London, 29 Nov. 1823; repr. in Collected Works, vol. 11, ed. by A R Waller and Arnold Glover, 1904).

That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
-- Ben Hecht, American writer of short stories, novels, dramas, and screenplaysn Bartlett's Unfamiliar Quotations (1971), p. 113, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Georg W F Hegel (1770-1831)

The proofs of the existence of God are to such an extent fallen into discredit that they pass for something antiquated, belonging to days gone by.
-- Georg Hegel, German philosopher from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion

Our forefathers did not erect the wall of separation because they were irreligious, but because they were religious. They saw the wall of separation as a wall of protection for both church and state ...
     They wrote our Constitution against the backdrop of European church-state conflict that had ravaged the Continent for centuries. It is no wonder that they said, "Enough of cooperation of church and state; for the sake of both, for the sake of free men, let us have separation."
     And so they built a wall....
     -- Roland R Hegstad, Editor of Liberty magazine address, October 1966, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders.
-- Heinrich Heine, German poet from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion,

Religion cannot sink lower than when somehow it is raised to a state religion ... It becomes then an avowed mistress.
-- Heinrich Heine, Letters from Berlin (1822), quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of -- another Jew?
-- Heinrich Heine (attributed), Heine converted from the faith of his fathers, Judaism, to Christianity, in 1825, in order to secure his rights as a German citizen, quoted from Encarta® Book of Quotations (1999)

I consider it a degradation and a stain on my honor to submit to baptism in order to qualify myself for state employment in Prussia.
-- Heinrich Heine, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion,

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.
-- Heinrich Heine, Gedanken und Einfalle

Of course God will forgive me; that's His job.
-- Heinrich Heine, quoted in Edmond and Charles Goncourt, Journal (23 Feb. 1863), said on his deathbed, in reply to a priest who had told him God would forgive his sins. The psychiatrist Sigmund Freud commented on this: "The force of the joke lies in its purpose. What it means to say is nothing else than: 'Of course he'll forgive me. That's what he's there for, and that's the only reason I've taken him on (as one engages one's doctor or one's lawyer).' So in the dying man, as he lay there powerless, a consciousness stirred that he had created God and equipped him with power so as to make use of him when the occasion arose. What was supposed to be the created being revealed itself just before its annihilation as the creator." (From Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, "The Purposes of Jokes," 1905.) Quoted from the Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.

Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
-- Robert A Heinlein: American author, considered one of the most important writers of science fiction Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, quoted in McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, p. 375, History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

The most preposterous notion that H sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
-- Robert A Heinlein: Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
-- Robert A Heinlein: Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, submitted by Bill Frampton

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
-- Robert A Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything ... just give him time to rationalize it.
-- Robert A Heinlein, from Job: A Comedy of Justice, submitted by Bill Frampton, citation thanks to James A Brown

The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned.... Our hymns were loaded with arrogance -- self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day.
-- Robert A Heinlein, from Laurence J Peter, in, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume V - Number 3 - March 2008

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