Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
Thomas Paine

Religion is the opium of the masses.
Karl Marx

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.
Karl Marx

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.
Karl Marx

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.
Karl Marx

But even in the Christian religion, much of its real meaning is hidden by words that are misleading and symbols that but few understand.
Ernest Holmes

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Voltaire

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.
Voltaire

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
Voltaire

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
Voltaire

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
Carl Sagan

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Pope John Paul II

What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!
William Blake

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.
William Blake

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
Niccolo Machiavelli

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
James Madison

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.
James Madison

Religion is all bunk.
Thomas A. Edison