This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
— Dalai Lama

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
— Anne Lamott

Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure.
— Harvard Lamphoon

It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.
— D.H. Lawrence

There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
— Richard Lederer

One reason why I recommend the abandonment of religious beliefs is because I think those beliefs are wrong. There is no evidence that our world was created by divine intention, that a god intercedes in human affairs, or that there is life after death. Religion is a hangover from humankind’s timorous infancy; it’s time for us to walk upright and unafraid, and to take charge of our own lives.
— Simon LeVay

Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.
— Andrew Lias

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
— Abraham Lincoln

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.
— Abraham Lincoln

Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon.
— Abraham Lincoln

It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.
— Abraham Lincoln

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
— James Madison

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
— James Madison

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
— Ferdinand Magellan

Jim Bakker spells his name with two k’s because three would be too obvious.
— Bill Maher

The world holds two classes of men — intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.
— Abu’l-Ala-Al-Ma’arri

Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
— Karl Marx

On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking 40 days to find a place to park.
— Curtis McDougall

If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that’s okay, he’s God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.
— Dennis McKinsey

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.-Delos B. McKown
Most sermons sound to me like commercials – but I can’t make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.
— Mignon McLaughlin

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. -Doug McLeod
You can never tell the sinner from the Christian. They drink the same drinks and smoke the same cigars.
— Aimee Semple McPherson

That is the whole trouble with being a heretic. One usually must think out everything for oneself.
— Aubrey Menan

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
— H. L. Mencken

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
— H. L. Mencken

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.
— H. L. Mencken

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
— H. L. Mencken

The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.
— John Stuart Mill

Moral: a peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible, such as that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed or your male member missing, you must never enter a sanctuary of the Lord.
— Donald Morgan

A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism.
— Donald Morgan

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
— John Morley

An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth – for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue, and enjoy it. An Atheist thinks that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end to troubles in the hereafter. He knows that we are our brother’s keeper and keepers of our lives; that we are responsible persons, that the job is here and the time is now.
— Madalyn Murray (later O’Hair)