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Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (1858-1947)
German physicist and Nobel laureate, who was the originator of the quantum theory

Religion belongs to that realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore is closed to science.
-- Max Planck, Where is Science Going?, quoted from James A Haught, editor, 2000 Years of Disbelief

The history of all times and nations teaches us that exactly in the naïve, unshakable belief, furnished by religion in active life of believers, originate the most intense motives for the most significant creative performance, not only in the field of arts and sciences but also in politics.
-- Max Planck, from lecture Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, Leipzig (1958), S 5, quoted from Adam Roman, "Remarkable attitude of Max Planck to religion" (18 July 2001)

Under these conditions it is no wonder, that the movement of atheists (Gottlosenbewegung), which declares religion to be just a delibarate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever-faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but -- which is even worse -- also any prospects at a better future.
-- Max Planck, from lecture Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, Leipzig (1958), S 7, quoted from Adam Roman, "Remarkable attitude of Max Planck to religion" (18 July 2001)

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.
-- Max Planck, The Philosophy of Physics (1936) page 97. Quoted from Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (1997), the chapter titled, "How Thinking Goes Wrong"( page 60).

Plato (ca BCE 428-347)
Greek philosopher

For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright.
-- Plato, acknowledging that atheists can lead an honest life, quoted from Jim Herrick, Against the Faith (1985), p. 22

We have already stated summarily what the punishment should be for temple-robbing, whether by open force or secretly. But the punishments for the various sorts of insolence in speech or action with regard to the gods, which a man can show in word or deed, have to be proclaimed after we have provided an exordium. Let this be it: "No one believing, as the laws prescribe, in the existence of the gods has ever yet performed an impious action willingly, or uttered a lawless word. Anyone acting in such a way is in one of three conditions: either, first, he does not believe the proposition aforesaid; or, second, he believes that though the gods exist they have no concern about men; or, third, he believes that they can easily be won over by the bribery of prayer and sacrifice"
-- Plato, The Laws, Book X (§885B), quoted from Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism," in God and Atheism (1984)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
American writer known especially for his macabre poems and short stories

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia, (1844-49), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter ... than you and I; and all religion ... is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Rabbi Daniel Polish

The public schools of this country serve the admirable function of bringing together on common ground students from a diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds. The introduction of public prayer into such a setting jeopardizes the sense of community and unnecessarily intrudes an emotional and divisive factor.
-- Daniel Polish, testimony on behalf of the Synagogue Council of America September 8, 1980, US House of Representatives, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the United States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments to office.
-- James K Polk, from George Seldes, The Great Quotations (1067) P 169, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Katha Pollitt
American feminist author; poet; cultural and political critic; columnist for The Nation

I'm anticlerical, not antireligion. If somebody believes there is God, I'm not interested in trying to persuade that person there is no intelligent design to the universe. Where I become interested and wake up is about the temporal power of religion, things like prayer in schools, or Catholic-secular hospital mergers.
-- Katha Pollitt, quoted in Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001

As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.
-- Katha Pollitt, "Weirding Out on Creationism," The Nation (September 20, 1999)

Right now religion has the romantic aura of the forbidden -- Christ is cool. We need to bring it into the schools, which kids already hate, and associate it firmly with boredom, regulation, condescension, makework and de facto segregation ... Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn't kill Christ -- a little on the late side, isn't it?
-- Katha Pollitt, The Nation (December 26, 1994), quoted from Tim Madigan, "Five Arguments in Favor of School Prayer," from the newsletter of the Shreveport Humanists

In a better world, science teachers would teach creationism along with evolution as an exercise in critical thinking.
-- Katha Pollitt, "Weirding Out on Creationism," The Nation (September 20, 1999)

Marco Polo (1254-1324)
Venetian traveler, born of a merchant family, son and nephew respectively of jewel merchants Niccolò and Maffeo Polo; Marco's written account of his travels to and from China gave Europeans an unprecedented sense of familiarity with Asian culture, thereby stimulating Asian trade

The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he game them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened.
     When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will.
     And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: "Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise." And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly.
-- Marco Polo, describing his visit to Assassin (Hashishin) Hasan-i Sabbah in Alamut in 1273, the "beverege" was most likely Hashish mingled with a strong belladonna-based plant (per CW), quoted from Edward Burman, The Assassins: Holy Killers of Islam

Polybius (BCE 200?-118)
Greek statesman and historian, probably the first to advocate the separation of powers

Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.
-- Polybius, Histories (ca. BCE 125), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet known for brilliant verse and stinging satire

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.
-- Alexander Pope, espousing Deism in his Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 331, quoted from John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)
German-English philosopher known for his contributions to the understanding of scientific reasoning and his attacks on historicism

A system [is] empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation.... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.
-- Karl Popper, The Logic Of Scientific Discovery, thanks to Laird Wilcox, editor, "The Degeneration of Belief"

We have the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should tolerate even them whenever we can do so without running a great risk; but the risk may become so great that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury.
-- Karl Popper, paraphrase by Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values (page 215)

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous -- from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.
-- Karl Popper, The Open Society And Its Enemies (1950), thanks to Laird Wilcox, editor, "The Degeneration of Belief"

The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance.
-- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (US edition, page 508), quoted from Richard Robinson's An Atheist's Values (page 218)

The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.
-- Karl Popper, The Open Society (US edition, page 340), quoted in Richard Robinson's An Atheist's Values (page 252). Robinson continues: "This implies both that violence may be right under a tyranny and that violence is never right under a democracy. I have found by writing to him that Dr Popper allows one case where violence may be right even under a democracy, namely where the country is about to cease to be a democracy and some illegal action might prevent this. The disappearance of the Czechoslovak democracy in the 1940's suggests this. By legal means the Communist Party gained control and ended democracy. It seems that this could not have been prevented by any legal means, but could have been prevented by some illegal action."

Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972)
American poet, critic

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.
-- Ezra Pound, letter (undated), to Pound's fiancée, Mary Moore (from the Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania), in Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character, pt. 1, ch. 8 (1988), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

A heroic figure ... not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him.
-- Ezra Pound, describing Jesus Christ, to the father of Pound's bride-to-be, Dorothy Shakespear, explaining his reasons for not wanting a church wedding, in: Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character, pt. 2, ch. 13 (1988), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Judge Charles Price
Circuit Court judge who ruled against Judge Roy Moore's practice of posting an abbridged version of the Protestant listing of the first stone tablets of the Hebrew Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall

The court states ... to those who have asked the court by phone calls, individual and multiple signature letters, and postcards to "save the Ten Commandments," ... that the Ten Commandments are not in peril. They are neither stained, tarnished, nor thrashed. They may be displayed in every church, synagogue, temple, mosque, home and storefront. They may be displayed in cars, on lawns, and in corporate board rooms. Where the precious gift cannot and should not be displayed as an obvious religious text or to promote religion is on government property.
-- Judge Charles Price, quoted from Conrad Goeringer, "Judge Price Wins Profiles In Courage Citation"

[Judge Roy Moore] has unequivocally stated that the plaques are not in the courtroom for a historical, judicial or educational purpose, but rather, and clearly to promote religion.
-- Judge Charles Price, quoted from Bill Poovey, "Judges Battle Over Courtroom Display of Ten Commandments" (February 28, 1997)

It is obvious that the sole purpose of the plaques hanging in the courtroom in such a fashion in purely religious.
-- Judge Charles Price, quoted from Conrad Goeringer, "Judge Rules That Decalogue Is A Religious, Not Historical Statement" (February 13, 1997)

Joseph Priestly (1733-1804)
English-American scientist, natural philosopher, and theologian, whose views that religion and reason do not contradict probably prevented Thomas Jefferson from being a full-blown or "strong" atheist

As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, ... that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.
-- Joseph Priestly, from Ira V Brown, Joseph Priestley: Selections from His Writings (1962) pp 289-290. Priestley and Jefferson believed that the very nature of atonement suggests that God, not humanity, was a failure.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721)
English diplomat and poet

That if weak women went astray,
Their stars were more in fault than they.
-- Matthew Prior, showing the real reason behind our failures, which others tend to attribure to our passions: "Hey, babe! What sign are you?" (pick-up line, ca. 1977), in "Hans Carvel" (1701), quoted from John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Richard Anthony Proctor (1837-1888)
British astronomer and writer, who, on finding that he would need to support his family by his writing (due to an investment mishap), grudgingly forsook the writing style "requiring arduous study" for a more popular style; wrote Myths and Marvels of Astronomy

Astronomy ... is of all others the science which seems to present to us the most striking instance of waste in nature.
-- Richard Proctor, Our Place Among Infinities (1875), p. 40, quoted from Woolsey Teller, The Atheism of Astronomy: A Refutation of the Theory that the Universe is Governed by Intelligence (1938)

Protagoras of Abdera (ca. BCE 480-411)
Greek philosopher; professional sophist

About the gods I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist or what they are like to look at; many things prevent my knowing -- among others, the fact that they are never seen and the shortness of human life.
-- Protagoras, quoted from Jim Herrick, Against the Faith (1985), p. 21

As to the gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like.
-- Protagoras, On the Gods, quoted from James A Haught, "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996)

Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.
-- Protagoras, quoted from Jim Herrick, Against the Faith (1985), p. 21

Bill Pryor
Alabama Alabama attorney general appointed by Governor Fob James; supporter of Judge Roy Moore's use of the courtroom and courthouse to advertise the Christian religion and proclaim its supremacy over other religions

     • See Bill Pryor's Scary Quotations

No man is above the law.
-- Bill Pryor, regarding Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's refusal to obey the law after Moore's eight associate justices withdrew their support of Moore's move to use the lobby of the Alabama State Courthouse to advertise the Christian religion, contrary to state and federal law, contrary to the rights guaranteed to all American citizens, in Jeffrey Gettleman, "Thou Shalt Not, Colleagues Tell Alabama Judge" (The New York Times: August 21, 2003)

Samuel Putnam
Former Congregationalist minister; author of 400 Years of Freethought (1894)

The doctrine of the unity of God is ever an advance upon the doctrine o the trinity of God. It is a step toward the destruction of God.
-- Samuel Putnam, in his 400 Years of Freethought (1894), page 28; excerpted by PAM

The doctrine of the unity of God logically tends to Pantheism, as it did in the philosophy of Averroes [Ibn Rushd (ابن رشد), 1126-98], and Pantheism eventually becomes atheism.
-- Samuel Putnam, in his 400 Years of Freethought (1894), page 28; excerpted by PAM

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
-- Samuel Putnam, on the title page of his 400 Years of Freethought (1894); excerpted by PAM

The last superstition of the human mind is the superstition that religion in itself is a good thing, though it might be free from dogma. I believe, however, that the religious feeling, as feeling, is wrong, and the civilized man will have nothing to do with it.... [When the] shadow of religion disappeared forever ... I felt that I was free from a disease.
-- Samuel Putnam, My Religious Experience (1891), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief; excerpted by PAM

The moment that one loses confidence in God, or immortality in the universe, [one becomes] more self-reliant, more courageous, and the more solicitous of aid where only human aid is possible.
-- Samuel Putnam, My Religious Experience (1891), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief; excerpted by PAM

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