A-D Quotes

Susan Brownell Anthony
(1820-1906) American feminist leader and suffragist

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

Isaac Asimov
(1920-1992) wrote over 500 science fiction books, strong proponent of scientific reasoning who adamantly opposed creationists, religious zealots, pseudoscience, and mysticism

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

"We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational...Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."

"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."

"I certainly don't believe in the mythologies of our society, in heaven and hell, in God and angels, in Satan and demons. I've thought of myself as an 'atheist,' but that simply described what I didn't believe in, not what I did. Gradually, though, I became aware there was a movement called 'humanism,' which used that name because, to put it most simply, humanists believe that human beings produced the progressive advance of human society and also the ills that plague it. They believe that if the ills are to be alleviated, it is humanity that will have to do the job. They disbelieve in the influence of the supernatural on either the good or the bad of society."

"The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has."

Sir Frances Bacon
(1561-1626) English philosopher and statesman

"Knowledge is power. -Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est." Meditationes Sacræ. De Hæresibus

"No pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage-ground of truth." Of Truth

Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832) Leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and one of the founders of utilitarianism

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? But rather, Can they suffer?" on animals