RPK > RPK's Quotes

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

“[God is] a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser , a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“There is a time and a place for nice, but there’s a time and a place for ‘fuck you’ as well.  And in this movement we need both.  Nice is good for outreach.  Nice is good for PR.  Nice is good for winning converts and softening our image.  But ‘fuck you’ has its uses, too.  ‘Fuck you’ is good for rallying the troops.  ‘Fuck you’ is good for boiling the blood.  ‘Fuck you’ is good for reminding people why they got active about atheism in the first place.  And what’s more, when people are trying to shove their religion into your schools, your government and your life, ‘fuck you’ is not only useful, it’s the only correct response.”
― Noah Lugeons, Diatribes, Volume 1: 50 Essays From a Godless Misanthrope

“You’re better looking than me. You’re more intelligent than me. Your personality is more likable than mine. You make more money than me. Your family is nicer than mine. Your religion is better than mine. You’ve seen more beaches than me. You’ve been to more cities than me. Your automobile is nicer than mine. Your significant other is better looking than mine. Your candidate won. Your home team won. You’re number one. But life is a tie. We all die.”
― Jason Daniel Chaplin

“Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”
― R.D. Laing

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.”
― Emmett F. Fields

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead.”
― Bret Easton Ellis

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“TEAMWORK: A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.”
― Justin Sewell

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
― George Carlin

“As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, ‘Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“That it will never come again Is what makes life so sweet.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. ' Michael Shermer, In The Science of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape, and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person, 'and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you'. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind?”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or
complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't
this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will
never even be offered life in the first place?”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“The book is true, and if evidence seems to condtradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out not the book.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds. Non-fundamentalist, "sensible" religion may not be doing that. But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion