Man is a Religious Animal. He 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. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven… The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Mark Twain

You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your ‘friends’.

Mark Twain

A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.

Mark Twain

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

Mark Twain

If God had meant for us to be naked, we'd have been born that way.

Mark Twain

Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Mark Twain

Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.

Immanuel Kant

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Bertrand Russell

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

Bertrand Russell

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

Bertrand Russell

That is the idea — that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not A Christian”

Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god — both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter.

Former preacher and co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker

If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?

Dan Barker

If your staff is happy, you are doing your job. People don’t often leave jobs — and, in particular, bosses — they like. Treat people the right way and you will have disciples for life.

Tom Markert

During my time at IBM, I came to see that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game — it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

Lou Gerstner

You will be great exactly to the extent that you are willing and eager to hire people who are better than you.

Tom Peters

Management is the efficiency of climbing the ladder of success. Leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Stephen Covey

There is no law that mandates the teaching of evolution, and there should not be, yet it is practically universally taught in universities and colleges around the world. The theory of evolution is what is taught because it is what best explains the data in a rational manner.

Tim Berra

If my interlocutor desires to convince me that Jupiter has inhabitants, and that his description of them is accurate, it is for him to bring forward evidence in support of his contention. The burden of proof evidently lies on him; it is not for me to prove that no such beings exist before my non-belief is justified, but for him to prove that they do exist before my belief can be fairly claimed. Similarly, it is for the affirmer of God's existence to bring evidence in support of his affirmation; the burden of proof lies on him.

Annie Besant

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them seriously.

Samuel Butler, “Notebooks”

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

Samuel Butler, “Notebooks”

An apology for the Devil — it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Samuel Butler

Of religion I know nothing — at least, in its favor.

Lord Byron

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

Herb Caen

If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed.

George Carlin, “Napalm & Silly Putty”