Christopher Hitchens

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top atheist quotes (total: 30)

atheist quote	context	quality?
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof		10 990
“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”		22
"What can be asserted without evidence can therefore be dismissed without evidence."		18
On Jerry Falwell: If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.		2 17
The only time I've ever prayed to God was for an erection.		4 20
“Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.”		1 13
“We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”		9
“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”		1 11
To terrify children with the image of hell and to lord it over woman as inferior creatures...is that good for this world and humanity?		8
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”		8
“To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”		8
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence		8
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence		8
"There is no difference between taking communion and drinking the Kool-Aid."		8
"The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike."		1 10
"What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof."		1 10
Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge.		2 12
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.		7
"Monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few non-events."		7
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence		7
[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.		1 9
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."		1 9
[Mike Huckabee] said: "no, I don't believe I am a descendant from a monkey". Well, as you know, the Theory of Evolution does not demand that you believe in anything remotely like that (...) If we were descendants from the monkeys we would probably look quite a lot like governor Huckabee.		1 9
“How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.”		6
I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.		6
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim--so modestly and so humbly--to possess. It is time to withdraw our "respect" from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.		6
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.		6
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.		6
Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy		1 8
There, by the grace of God, goes someone else.		5