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Positive Atheism Quotes

Browse 1875 quotes about Positive Atheism.

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Positive Atheism Quotes

“If there is no military need for the building, leave it alone, neither putting anyone in or out of it, except on finding some one preaching or practicing treason, in which case lay hands on him, just as if he were doing the same thing in any other building.”

IfsNeedsHandsCasesAtheismMilitaryBuildingFindingsLaysPositive AtheismPreachingTreason
Book:Collected Works: The Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, Illinois. Roy P. Basler, Editor; Marion Dolores Pratt and Lloyd A. Dunlap, Assistant Editors
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“There was the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose with few exceptions, got all of that Church. My wife had some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some in the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me because I belonged to no Church, and was suspected of being a Deist and had talked of fighting a duel.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her.”

IfsWellsEndsFactsLordAtheismPositive AtheismBeing TrueOccasionsDiscussionConsiderationDispositionSuggesting
Book:The Table Talk of Abraham Lincoln
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“In making up my mind as to what Mr. Lincoln really believed, I do not take into consideration the evidence of unnamed persons or the contents of anonymous letters; I take the testimony of those who knew and loved him, of those to whom he opened his heart and to whom he spoke in the freedom of perfect confidence.”

MindHeartPersonsPerfectAtheismEvidenceLettersPositive AtheismConsiderationSpokesTestimonyMaking UpAnonymous Letters
Book:Ingersoll: Fifty Great Selections, Lectures, Tributes, After Dinner Speeches and Essays, Carefully Selected from the Twelve Volume Dresden Edition of Colonel Ingersoll's Complete Works
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“No one of Lincoln's old acquaintances in this city ever heard of his conversion to Christianity by Dr. Smith or anyone else. It was never suggested nor thought of here until after his death.... I never saw him read a second of time in Dr. Smith's book on Infidelity. He threw at down upon our table - spit upon it as it were - and never opened it to my knowledge.”

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Author:William Herndon
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“Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.”

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Book:Selected Writings of James Madison
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“[T]he bill exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates in particular the article of the Constitution of the United States which declares that Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.... This particular church, therefore, would so far be a religious establishment by law, a legal force and sanction being given to certain articles in its constitution and administration.”

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Author:James Madison
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“Because the bill vests in the said incorporated church an authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same, an authority which, being altogether superfluous if the provision is to be the result of pious charity, would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”

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Book:Selected Writings of James Madison
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“And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict [prohibition] against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state.”

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Author:James Madison
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“I have received your letter of the 6th, with the eloquent discourse delivered at the consecration of the Jewish Synagogue. Having ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect, and the secure enjoyment of it as the best human provision for bringing all either into the same way of thinking, or into that mutual charity which is the only substitute, I observe with pleasure the view you give of the spirit in which your sect partake of the blessings offered by our Government and laws.”

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Book:1816-1828
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“The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.”

IfsGivingFirstsBelieveDoeReasonFactsEarthCausesSupportAtheismEffectsFieldsIgnoranceTomorrowConcernDignityFilledMereNotionPatientIntuitionPositive AtheismArguingTheologyRevelationsGapsMetaphysicsInquirySeekersOrigin Of Life
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing and another that, but both agree unreservedly that the text itself is impeccable, and neither in the midst of the most violent disputation would venture to accuse the other of doubt. To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism. Even the infidel Scopes himself is not charged with any such infamy.”

MenMayGivenDoubtAtheismHolyConflictEqualAgreePositive AtheismBelieverGenuineViolentMidstVentureScopeFactionsTrue BelieverInfidelCannibalismImpeccableDoubtersInfamyAccusing
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.”

MenWorldImportantWarCountryMatterStatesSidesLosesUnitedResultsOpinionUnited StatesAtheismSubjectsExampleProtectCriticismCriticsPositive AtheismImprovementSteadyHarshStatus QuoVitalityTabooExperimentationRevisionFree Opinion
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous.... The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected.”

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Author:H. L. Mencken
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“There comes a day of public ceremonial, and a chance to make a speech.... A million voters with IQs below 60 have their ears glued to the radio. It takes four days' hard work to concoct a speech without a sensible word in it. Next a dam must be opened somewhere. Four dry Senators get drunk and make a painful scene. The Presidential automobile runs over a dog. It rains.”

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Author:H. L. Mencken
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“It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith.”

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Author:John Stuart Mill
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“The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind.”

ThinkingWayShouldEnoughWould BeFormSocialMoralAtheismMankindAcceptanceJudgmentIdealsMajorityPositive AtheismBe GoodSatisfiedGood EnoughRebelliousSpontaneityTroublesomeReformersObstruction
Book:J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings
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“What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.”

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Author:John Stuart Mill
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“Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.”

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Book:Utilitarianism, liberty, and representative government
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“Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.”

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Book:Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. Being three Essays on Religion. With introductory notice by Helen Taylor
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“He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.”

KnowsFeelsBelievePersonsWholeAbleFormForceViewsAtheismSubjectsArgumentDifficultyPositive AtheismEncountersRemovePortionsEarnestPlausiblePersuasive
Author:John Stuart Mill
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“Parasitism is the only practice of the church; with its ideal of anaemia, its holiness, draining all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself.”

WellsSoulRealitySpiritChurchPracticeBloodAtheismIdealsCrossesMarkPositive AtheismRecognitionHolinessConspiracyGraciousnessDrainingHealth BeautyAnaemia
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“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.”

MenWorldAtheismThousandErrorsPositive AtheismFalsehoodSly
Book:THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…
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“Had he been willing to live a hypocrite, he would have been respectable, he at least could have died surrounded by other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites, and above his hypocritical dust there would have been a hypocritical monument covered with lies.”

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Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll
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