"History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it. Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent."

Robert A. Heinlein - American science-fiction Author

"That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." His companion was surprised to see nothing more alarming that a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the child's shoulder. "Run, little boy," cried Hitchcock, leaning out of the car. "Run for your life!"

Sir Alfred Hitchcock - British film director

"I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself."

Christopher Hitchens - Columnist/Commentator

"All thinking men are atheists. Ernest did not only not believe in God but regarded organized religion as a menace to human happiness."

Ernest Hemingway - American Author

"I have left my religious conversion behind and settled into a comfortable state of atheism. I have come to think that religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. The Jerry Falwells of this world are living proof of the hypocrisy that permeates organized religion in America and around the world."

Larry Flynt - Publisher of Hustler Magazine

"Religion is all bunk. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."

Thomas Edison - American inventor

"I absolutely believe what Ellie believes that there is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see?"

Jodie Foster - Actress

"I write as an atheist, but there are Christian and Jewish scholars whose versions [of the Bible] would be far more radical than mine. They will find this historians' view conservative, even old fashioned, but there are times when atheists are loyal friends of the truth."

Robin Lane Fox - Professor/Author

". . . believing in doctrine is bad enough, but if you start trying to reason from it, you churn out an ever growing list of absurdities which you also have to believe."

Greg Egan - Australian SF Writer

"I guess what I'm saying is: I don't have any religious belief. I don't believe there is a God. I don't believe in Christianity or Judaism or anything like that, okay? I'm not an atheist...I'm not an agnostic...I'm just in a simple state. I don't know what there is or might be..."

Ed Fredkin - Computer Scientist

"Huxley coined the term 'agnostic.' We have not the slightest objection to believe anything you like, if you will give us good grounds for belief; but, if you cannot, we must respectfully refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality and insure our own damnation several times over. We are quite content to leave that decision to the future. The course of the past has impressed us with the firm conviction that no good ever comes out of falsehood, and we feel warranted in refusing even to experiment in that direction"

Thomas Henry Huxley - English biologist

"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be. In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.

Sigmund Freud - Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst

"I live for now, not for what happens after I die. If I die and there's something afterwards, I'm going to hell, not heaven. I mean, the devil's got all the good gear. What's God got? The Inspiral Carpets and nuns. F that."

Liam Gallagher - Musician

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless . . . its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish. The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. When I hear a man is religious, I conclude that he is a rascal, although I have known some instances of very good men being religious."

David Hume - Scottish philosopher and historian

"I admit that sometimes man needs orientation and religion could help him in that, but the true above everything! And we should not collaborate with the lie that is Christianism."

Nuno Filipe - Portuguese Writer

"Until I get some evidence one way or the other which is compelling to me, I'm going to have to remain an agnostic..."