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Voltaire (French Philosopher, 1694-1778)
"Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." "Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense." "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason. Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites. Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. The son of God is the same as the son of man; the son of man is the same as the son of God. God, the father, is the same as Christ, the son; Christ, the son, is the same as God, the father. This language may appear confused to unbelievers, but Christians will readily understand it. God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil. The first priest was the first rogue who met the first fool. Holy Scripture: A book sent down from heaven... Holy Scriptures contain all that a Christian should know and believe, provided he adds to it a million or so commentaries. Hell: A cooking stove which heats the sacerdotal sauce-pan here below. It was founded on behalf of our priests, to the end that the latter may never be wanting in good cheer. Moses: A prophet inspired of God who gave him a holy and righteous law, which he was obliged to change later on, seeing that it had become worthless... He was the meekest of men, as he himself tells us. Inspiration: A peculiar effect of divine flatulence emitted by the Holy Spirit which hisses into the ears of a few chosen of God...
Benjamin Franklin (American Statesman, 1706-1790)
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity." “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion...has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble." Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. He [the Rev. Mr. Whitefield] used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.
David Hume (Philosopher, 1711-1776)
"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." 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.
John Adams (American Statesman, 1735-1826)
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity." "As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"
Thomas Paine (American Statesman, 1737-1809)
"It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.” "As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism -- a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up Chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is an near Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.” "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life." "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church" "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” "Each of these churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their word of God, the Koran, was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of these churches accuses the others of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.” "No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest so to do." It has often been said that anything may be proved from the Bible; but before anything can be admitted as proved by the Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of anything. I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to that book (The Bible). Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as it respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
Ethan Allen (American Revolutionary and Statesman, 1738-1789)
"I
have been given the denominated as a Deist,
the reality of which I never disputed,
being conscious that I am no Christian."
Thomas Jefferson (American Statesman, 1743-1826)
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, January 19, 1810 “An amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that [the preamble] should read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion’; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu and Infidel of every denomination.” "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes." "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." "The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ." "Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity.” Were the Pope, or his allies, to send in mission to us some thousands of Jesuit priests to convert us to their orthodoxy, I suspect that we should deem and treat it as a national aggression on our peace and faith. The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites. Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. 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 political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.
James Madison (American Statesman, 1751-1836, Co-Author Declaration of Independence)
"In no instance have ... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people." "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." [from The First Amendment to The United States Constitution] "The civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State." "We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth that religion, or the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and that it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate."
Abraham Lincoln (American Statesman, 1809-1865)
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them." I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome. I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity. My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
Albert Einstein (Scientist, 1879-1955)
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in Nature."
Mark Twain (American Writer, 1835-1910):
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." "I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Diety. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible." "Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness. ... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast." "In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing." Man is a Religious Animal. Man is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be-a Christian. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it... The Christian Bible is a drug store. It's contents have remained the same but the medical practice continues. For 1,800 years these changes were slight-scarcely noticeable... The dull and ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most repulsive drugs to be found in the store's stock... He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day during all that time. These people's God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible's statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all. Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast. I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass. He killed all those people -- every male. There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him — early. The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born. Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery. The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example. The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward. God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New -- the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance. To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of His colossal universe is proof that He is at least steadfast to His purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as the affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will be steadfast, just and fair toward us. We shall not need to require anything more.
William Howard Taft (American Statesman, 1857-1930):
Mahatma
K. Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian
nationalist leader: How very nice it would be if the missionaries rendered humanitarian service without the ulterior aim of conversion. I hold that proselytisation under the cloak of humanitarian work is unhealthy to say the least. It is most resented by people here. Religion after all is a deeply personal thing. It touches the heart. Why should I change my religion because the doctor who professes Christianity as his religion has cured me of some disease, or why should the doctor expect me to change whilst I am under his influence? My fear is that though Christian friends nowadays do not say or admit it that Hindu religion is untrue, they must harbour in their breast that Hinduism is an error and that Christianity, as they believe it, is the only true religion... so far as one can understand the present (Christian) effort, it is to uproot Hinduism from her very foundation and replace it by another faith. The first distinction I would like to make ... between your missionary work and mine is that while I am strengthening the faith of people, you (missionaries) are undermining it. If I had the power and could legislate, I should stop all proselytizing ... In Hindu households the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink ... I regard Jesus as a great teacher of humanity, but I do not regard him as the only begotten son of God. That epithet in its material interpretation is quite unacceptable. Metaphorically we are all sons of God, but for each of us there may be different sons of God in a special sense. Thus for me Chaitanya may be the only begotten son of God ... God cannot be the exclusive Father and I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. It is my firm opinion that Europe (and the United States) does not represent the spirit of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan. And Satan's successes are the greatest when appears with the name of God on his lips. I consider western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ's Christianity. I cannot conceive Jesus, if he was living in flesh in our midst, approving of modern Christian organizations, public worship, or ministry. It pains me to have to say that the Christian missionaries as a body, with honorable exceptions, have actively supported a system which has impoverished, enervated and demoralized a people considered to be among the gentlest and most civilized on earth.
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, India, 1896-1977)
Raja
Ram Mohan Roy, (1772-1833), Indian reformer:
Most Christian converts had been allured
to change their faith by other attractions
than by a conviction of the truth and reasonableness.
Bhaktivinoda Thakura (Gaudiya Vaishnava Acharya, India, 1837-1914)
“Deliberating on the virtues and faults of this world, some moralistic monotheists concluded that the material world is not a place of pure happiness. Indeed, the sufferings outweigh the pleasures. They claim that the material world is a prison to punish the living entities. If there is punishment, then there must be a crime. If there were no crime, then why would there be any punishment? What crime did the living entities commit? Unable to properly answer this question, some men of small intelligence gave birth to a very wild idea. God created the first man and placed him in a pleasant garden with his wife. Then God forbade the man to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Following the evil counsel of a wicked being, the first man and woman tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, thus disobeying God's command. In this way they fell from that garden into the material world filled with sufferings. Because of their offense, all other living entities are offenders from the moment of their birth. Not seeing any other way to remove this offense, God Himself took birth in a humanlike form, took on His own shoulders the sins of His followers, and then died. All who follow Him easily attain liberation, and all who do not follow Him fall into an eternal hell. In this way God assumes a humanlike form, punishes Himself, and thus liberates the living entities. An intelligent person cannot make sense of any of this.” “These philosophers say that the living entity's life begins at birth and ends with death. After death, he is not born again. After death he attains the results of his actions in that one lifetime.” “To accept this mixed-up religion one must first believe these rather implausible things: ‘The living entity's life begins at birth and ends at death. Before birth the living entity did not exist, and after death the living entity will no longer stay in the world of material activities. Only human beings have souls. Other creatures do not have souls.’ Only extremely unintelligent persons believe this religion. In this religion the living entity is not spiritual in nature. By His own will God created the living entities out of matter. Why are the living entities born into very different situations? The followers of this religion cannot say. Why is one living entity born into a house filled with sufferings, another living entity born into a house filled with joys, another living entity born into the house of a person devoted to God, and another living entity born into a wicked atheist's house? Why is one person born in a situation where he is encouraged to perform pious deeds, and he performs pious deeds and becomes good? Why is another person born in a situation where he is encouraged to sin, and he sins and becomes bad? The followers of this religion cannot answer all these questions. Their religion seems to say that God is unfair and irrational.” “Why do they say that animals have no souls? Why do birds and beasts not have souls like human beings? Why do the human beings have only one life, and, because of their actions in that one life are rewarded in eternal heaven or punished with eternal hell? Any person who believes in a truly kind and merciful God will find this religion completely unacceptable.” “These philosophers say that by cultivating fruitive work and speculative philosophy one should make improvements in the material world and in this way please God.” “The followers of this religion have no power to worship God selflessly. In general their idea is that by cultivating fruitive work and speculative philosophy one should work to make improvements in the material world and in this way please God. By building hospitals and schools, and by doing various philanthropic works, they try to do good to the world and thus please God. Worship of God by performing fuitive work (karma) and by engaging in philosophical speculation (jnana) is very important to them. They have no power to understand pure devotional service (suddha-bhakti), which is free of fruitive work and philosophical speculation. Worship of God done out of a sense of duty is never natural or unselfish. "God has been kind to us, and therefore we should worship Him." These are the thoughts of lesser minds. Why is this not a good way to worship God? Because one may think, "If God is not kind to me, then I will not worship Him." In this way one has the selfish, bad desire to get God's kindness in the future. If one wishes that God will be kind by allowing one to serve Him, then there is nothing wrong with that desire. But the religion under discussion does not see it in that way. This religion sees God's kindness in terms of one's enjoying a happy life in this material world.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950),
Indian nationalist and philosopher:
Swami
Vivekananda (1863-1902), Indian spiritualist
- They come to my country and abuse my forefathers, my religion, and everything; they walk near a temple and say 'you idolators, you will go to hell', but they dare not do this to the Mohammedans of India, for the sword will be out, but the Hindu is too mild. And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever you have found weaker races, you have exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You have settled on their lands, and they are gone for ever. What is the history of your America, your Australia, and New Zealand, your Pacific Islands and South Africa? Where are the aboriginal races there today? They have all been exterminated, you have killed them outright, as if they were wild beasts. It is only where you have not the power to do so, and there only, that other nations are still alive. If Christianity is a saving power in itself,
why has it not saved the Ethiopians, the
Abyssinians?
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer and philosopher:
H.G. Wells (1866-1946), British author: I think that it stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonism in existence. Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. It presents many faces to the world, but everywhere it is systematic in its fight against freedom. As with the Christian religion, the worst
argument for socialism is its adherents.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish author: Missionaries are going to reform the world
whether it wants to or not.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), American suffragist: I
found nothing grand in the history of the
Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the
Pentateuch. Surely the writers had a very
low idea of the nature of their god. They
made him not only anthropomorphic, but of
the very lowest type, jealous and revengeful,
loving violence rather than mercy.
Helen Keller (1880-1968), American activist and lecturer:
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), American politician and lecturer:
With soap, baptism is a good thing. Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give. The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know. God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues were sins. And the men who practiced these virtues, without faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain. All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by the ministers in their pulpits -- by teachers in Sunday schools and by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted in the cradle -- in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled with lies -- lies that mingled with their blood. Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American transcendentalist: We must get rid of that Christ, we must get rid of that Christ! The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
William E. H. Lecky (1838-1903), Irish Historian:
W. H. Auden (1907-1973), English poet:
Ferdinand August Bebel (1840-1913), German socialist leader:
William Blake (1757-1827), English Romantic poet:
Famous Quotes on Christianity - Page 2
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"If
we believe absurdities, we shall commit
atrocities."
"Original
sin was as ridiculous as imputed righteousness."
"No
testimony is sufficient to establish a
miracle, unless ... its falsehood would
be more miraculous than the fact which
it endeavors to establish."
“The government of the United States
is not in any sense founded on the
Christian religion.” (Treaty of Tripoli,
Article 11: Written during the
Administration of George Washington and signed
into law by John Adams.) 
"What
is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine,
cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament
teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty
committed debauchery with a woman engaged
to be married, and the belief of this
debauchery is called faith.”
"That
Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from
his own words."
"The clergy, by getting themselves
established by law, & in-grafted into
the
machine of government, have been a very formidable
engine against the civil
and religious rights of man. They are still
so in many countries & even in
some of these United States. Even in 1783,
we doubted the stability of our
recent measures for reducing them to the
footing of other useful callings.
It now appears that our means were effectual."
"During
almost fifteen centuries has the legal
establishment of Christianity been on trial.
What has 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."
"The
Bible is not my book nor Christianity my
profession. I could never give assent to
the long, complicated statements of Christian
dogma."
"My
religion consists of a humble admiration
of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight
details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply
emotional conviction of the
presence of a superior reasoning power, which
is revealed in the
incomprehensible universe, forms my idea
of God. "
"The
Bible is a mass of fables and traditions,
mere mythology."
It is impossible for me to reconcile myself
to the idea of conversion after the style
that goes on in India and elsewhere today.
It is an error which is perhaps the greatest
impediment to the world's progress toward
peace ... Why should a Christian want to
convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should
he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good
or godly man? 
“The
sastras [scripture] of the yavanas, or
meat-eaters, are not eternal scriptures.
They have been fashioned recently, and
sometimes they contradict one another.
The scriptures of the yavanas are three:
the Old Testament, the New Testament and
the Koran. Their compilation has a history;
they are not eternal like the Vedic knowledge.
Therefore although they have their
arguments and reasoning, they are not very
sound and transcendental. As
such, modern people
advanced in science and philosophy deem
these scriptures unacceptable.”
“Some
philosophers say that because of the first
living entity's sin all the other living
entities are imprisoned in the material
world. Later, punishing Himself for their
sins, God delivers the living entities.”
The mentality of the West has long cherished
the aggressive and quite illogical idea of
a single religion for all mankind, a religion
universal by the very force of its narrowness,
one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of
ceremonies, one array of prohibitions and
injunctions, one ecclesiastical ordinance.
That narrow absurdity prances about as the
one true religion which all must accept on
peril of persecution by men here and spiritual
rejection or fierce eternal punishment by
God in other worlds. This grotesque creation
of human unreason, the parent of so much
intolerance, cruelty, obscurantism and aggressive
fanaticism, have never been able to take
firm hold of the free and supple mind of
India.
We who had come from the east have sat here
day after day and have been told in a patronizing
way that we ought to accept Christianity
because Christian nations are the most prosperous.
We look about us and we see England the most
prosperous Christian nation in the world,
with her foot upon the neck of 250,000,000
Asiatics. We look back into history and see
that the prosperity of Christian Europe begin
with Spain. Spain's prosperity began with
the invasion of Mexico. Christianity wins
its prosperity by cutting the throats of
its fellow men. At such a price the Hindoo
will not have prosperity.
The
greatest evil in the world today is the
Christian religion.
When
I think of all the harm the Bible has done,
I despair of ever writing anything to equal
it.
There
is so much in the bible against which every
insinct of my being rebels, so much so
that I regret the necessity which has compelled
me to read it through from beginning to
end. I do not think that the knowledge
I have gained of its history and sources
compensates me for the unpleasant details
it has forced upon my attention.
The inspiration of the Bible depends on
the ignorance of the person who reads it.
I like the silence of a church, before
the service begins better than any preaching. 
The
only reason the Protestants and Catholics
have given up the idea of universal domination
is because they've realised they can't
get away with it.
If
Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought
to love him in the greatest degree; now
hear how he has given his sanction to the
law of the ten commandments: did he not
mock at the Sabbath, and so mock the sabbath's
God? Murder those who were murdered because
of him? Turn away the law from the woman
taken in adultery? Steal the labor of others
to support him? Bear false witness when he
omitted making a defence before Pilate? Covet
when he prayed for his disciples, and when
he bid them shake off the dust of their feet
against such as refused to lodge them? I
tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking
these ten commandments.
