Being an atheist, it's always nice to hear what other people that have made drastic differences in the world have to say on the subject. This list includes a variety of people that I respect, that have some very real and elegant thoughts on this:
Albert Einstein
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Abraham Lincoln
"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
Ernest Hemingway
"All thinking men are atheists."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?"
Benjamin Franklin
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible."
Dave Matthews
"If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world."
Freidrich Nietzshe
"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."
John Adams
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain")
"Faith is believing something you know ain’t true."
Thomas Jefferson
"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."
Thomas Edison
"Religion is all bunk."
Isaac Asimov
"Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived."
Susan B. Anthony
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
Bertrand Russell
"And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence."
Frank Lloyd Wright
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
