Secular Global Institute

 

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."

-- Lord Acton

" I regret the trifling narrow contracted education of the females of my own country."

-- Abigail Adams

" He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

-- Douglas Adams

" In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue."

-- Ethan Allen

" The fundamentalist believer is mostly a weird intellectual who often lacks real faith altogether. As a self-appointed attorney for God, who is in no need of attorneys, he very easily turns out to be more godless than the agnostic and the unbeliever. At all events, he seems deaf to reason."

-- Steve Allen

" Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be also outraged by silence. A belief is not true [simply] because it is useful."

-- Henri Frédéric Amiel

" If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank."

-- Woody Allen

" The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?"

-- Thomas Paine

" Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death."

-- Polybius, Greek Histories (ca. BCE 125)

" The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance."

-- Karl Popper

"So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it unwise, and their conscience it is wrong."

-- Walter Bagehot

"You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now."

-- Joan Baez

"The freedom allowed in the United States to all sorts of inquiry and discussion necessarily leads to a diversity of opinion, which is seen not only in their being different denominations, but different opinions also in the same denomination."

-- Robert Baird

"All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers."

-- Mikhail Bakunin

"There is a powerful desire by majorities to assert a religious identity for the country."

-- Jack Balkin, of Yale Law School

"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have."

-- James Arthur Baldwin

"Every religion manifests ideals such as do not steal, do not tell lies, and so on. These are the norms for any civilized society and they should not be linked to any religion or god."

-- D D Bandiste, Indian Rationalist

"If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe god is just figure of speech."

-- Dan Barker

"Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions."

-- Alan Barth, American Journalist

"Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism."

-- Baron d'Holbach

"We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"Few intelligent Christians can still hold to the idea that the Bible is an infallible Book, that it contains no linguistic errors, no historical discrepancies, no antiquated scientific assumptions, not even bad ethical standards. Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages. The existence of thousands of variations of texts makes it impossible to hold the doctrine of a book verbally infallible."

-- Elmer Homrighausen, Professor of Christian Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary