60 Atheist Quotes for Asking Valuable Questions (2022)

These Atheist quotes will open your mind to possibilities you may not have considered before.

The idea of Atheism is that there is no God, no religion, and no questioning—that would be Agnosticism. The idea of Atheism is only growing as more and more people begin to question the beliefs that they were brought up with. We are fed certain supposed truths as children, and it’s up to us as adults to decide whether we still believe them to be true.

What can the idea of Atheism say about belief?

The truth is, belief is often learned, not discovered for one’s self. When it comes to belief, the important thing is to recognize that you do not have to believe things you are unsure of, simply because someone told you they were true. It is okay to question everything.

Atheist Quotes About God and Religion

1. “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has every believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” – Richard Dawkins

2. “To you, I’m an atheist. To God, I’m the loyal opposition.” – Woody Allen

3. “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.” –Epicurus

4. “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

5. “The Bible has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.” – Mark Twain

6. “Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” – George Carlin

7. “If it turns out there is a God… the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.” – Woody Allen

8. “One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.” – Aleister Crowley

9. “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.” – Seven Weinberg

10. “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a religion.” – Robert M. Pirsig
If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of insanity quotes to help you stay sane in the chaos that is life.

11. “After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Atheist Quotes About Finding Meaning in Life

12. “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

13. “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.” – C.S. Lewis

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

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

16. “Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.” –Christopher Hitchens

17. “I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.” – Isaac Asimov

18. “We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.” – Christopher Hitchens

19. “Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens

20. “The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there’s any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.” –Neil deGrasse Tyson

21. “I don’t profess any religion; I don’t think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.’” – Philip Pullman

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of religious quotes from all over the world.

22. “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.” – Sam Harris

23. “A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.” – Richard K Morgan

24. “A true friend is a gift from God. Since God doesn’t exist, guess what? Neither do true friends.” – Scott Dikkers

Atheist Quotes to Reason Through Belief

25. “All thinking men are atheists.” – Ernest Hemingway

26. “Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?” –Friedrich Nietsche

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

28. “I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.” –Douglas Adams

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

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to check out our collection of Bible quotes to get you thinking.

30. “Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing ‘Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!’ If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.” – Dan Barker

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

32. “I don’t want to believe. I want to know.” – Carl Sagan

33. “She believed in nothing. Only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

34. “Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?” – Chuck Palahniuk

35. “Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood or believing in God.” – Scott Dikkers

36. “I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up.” – George Carlin

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of George Carlin quotes from the iconic comedian.

37. “Agnostics are just atheists without balls.” – Stephen Colbert

38. “Belief is the death of intelligence.” – Robert Anton Wilson

39. “I am an atheist out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have.” – Isaac Asimov

Atheist Quotes for Not Questioning Belief

40. “I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.” – Stephen Hawking

41. “The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God’s infinite love. That’s the message we’re brought up with isn’t it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.” – Bill Hicks

42. “Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.” – Emile Zola

43. “Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.” – Christopher Hitchens

44. “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing-all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames then for his own mistakes.” – Gene Roddenberry

45. “If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.” – Edmond de Goncourt

46. “The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is because vampires are allergic to bullshit.” – Richard Pryor
If you’re enjoying these quotes, you’ll love our collection of Richard Pryor quotes that will make you think.

47. “I die as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.” – Voltairine de Cleyre

48. “Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzche?” – John Fante

49. “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

50. “I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.” – Lord Byron

More atheist quotes that will make you think

51. “All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with ‘winning or losing this game of chess.” ― Marcel Duchamp

52. “My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.” ― George Santayana

53. “I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer

54. “The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains.” ― Al-Maʿarri

55. “It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.” ― Ricky Gervais

56. “I studied every page of this book, and I didn’t find enough love to fill a salt shaker. God is not love in the Bible; God is vengeance, from Alpha to Omega.” ― Ruth Hurmence Green

57. “If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.” ― Haruki Murakami

58. “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” ― St. Thomas Aquinas

59. “I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.” ― Christopher Hitchens

60. “A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” ― C.S. Lewis

What did you learn from these atheist quotes?

Atheism is not just about denouncing God. These Atheist quotes show that Atheism is more than simply a lack of belief—it is a mode of questioning. When it comes to learned beliefs, there should come a time in your life where those beliefs come up in question.

Whether the questioning is called upon from the death of a loved one, a new scientific discovery, or a simple examination of this modern world, it is important to listen, and accept the fact that not everything you learned in your youth is necessarily true.

What can be learned from the concept of Atheism? Atheism exists, whether you’re religious or not, and it’s important to recognize that the root of it is not an insult to religion, but rather, it is a mode of questioning. It isn’t necessary to believe everything you were taught as a child as fact, and questioning those beliefs is simply part of the path to self-discovery.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these Atheism quotes and sayings? Do you have any other quotes to add? Let us know in the comment section below.