114 "If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?"

2460 "My husband is not a Christian but is a religious man, I think." [Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, in _Toward The Mystery_]

3339 "A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root." [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_]

46 "Christianity: The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Makes perfect sense."

81 "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." -- Bertrand Russell

1054 "My thoughts will not cater to priest or dictator; No person can deny, Die Gedanken Sind Frei!" -- 16th century German peasant song

760 "'Voting' is a ritual designed to perpetrate the mistaken notion that 'the people' have anything whatever to do with the process of who really weilds power in the world. The political 'choices' being presented are as pointless and innane as the choice between 'Pepsi' and 'Coke.' It is simply absurd to believe that this choice will actually effect the real lives of people in any significant fashion. The whole business is merely one part of an overall tactic designed by those who have power to maintain that power by distracting the attentions of the people, keeping them occupied with the trivial so that they do not wake up and actually pay attention to what those who wield power are up to."

2424 "One of the conditions (for escaping the stake) was that of stating all they knew of other heretics and apostates, which proved an exceedingly fruitful source of information as, under the general terror, there was little hesitation in denouncing not only friends and acquaintances, but the nearest and dearest kindred -- parents and children, and brothers and sisters." [Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain]

442 "the purpose of seperation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -- James Madison (1751-1836), 1803 letter objecting to the use of government land for churches

1661 "Reason and free inquiry are the only effective agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error and error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruption of Christianity could not have been purged away." Thomas Jefferson

2782 "Christianity makes suffering contagious." [Friedrich Nietszche]

286 "Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy." -- Robert Anton Wilson

130 "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

718 "Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems." -- Rene Descartes

74 "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." -- Richard Dawkins

2760 "Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teachings?" [Nietzsche]

3598 "A Windows user spends 1/3 of his life sleeping, 1/3 working, 1/3 waiting."

1637 "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." [Mark Twain]

1832 Obey Psalms 137:9!

2764 ". . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that [crucifixion of Jesus Christ]!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form -- the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!" [Friedrich Nietzsche]