443 "The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

1969 "Miracles do not happen." [Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, last words of preface to 1883 edition]

3008 "It was a Christian university dedicated to the Christian education of Christians, and this purpose still dominated the campus. It was there like a dense fog shrouding low-lying land on still summer mornings - never a real hindrance to progress but frequently a nuisance to vision. It seemed to be heaviest around the Administration Building." [Ferrol Sams, "The Whisper Of The River"]

2785 "At the deathbed of Christianity.-- Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead - that is the best and most vital thing that still remains of Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity has thus crossed over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much 'God, freedom and immortality' that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition, and the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity." [Nietzsche, Daybreak, s. 92]

1076 "For God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn the large majority of the human race." -- Robert G. Ingersoll

818 "A people who are not convinced of their uniqueness and value will perish." -- David Lane

1252 "By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures." Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 45.

2956 "To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police." [Salman Rushdie, to Reuters News Service, 4/17/96]

2490 "Reason should be destroyed in all Christians." [Martin Luther]

2235 "We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the day when *reason*, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings and the God of Gods." [Robert G. Ingersoll]

3707 "Mary had a little lamb, it walked into a pylon. 10,000 volts went up its arse, and turned its wool into nylon."

344 "The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion." -- President Abraham Lincoln

3715 "Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel somewhat superior by attacking the messenger. They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again."

2690 "I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape" [Desmond Morris, "The Naked Ape"]

2289 "Whether the Bible is true or false, is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of the race." [Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]

2955 "The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas --uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes." [Salman Rushdie]

133 "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." -- Thomas Jefferson, to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

1044 "My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." -- Thomas Paine

1752 "There can be no perfect freedom unless the church and state are separated. But the church and state are not separated in America so long as the state grants a subsidy to the church in the form of tax exemption." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]

1045 "To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler -- and less trouble." -- Mark Twain