If only religion <i>were</i> an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.

Religion is just mind control.

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

RELIGION: BECAUSE THINKING IS HARD.

Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

Religion is a distraction from true education.

Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.

Religion suppresses curiosity.

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.

Is it necessary to point out to what extent and in what manner religions debase and corrupt the people? They destroy their reason, the principal instrument of human emancipation, and reduce them to imbecility, the essential condition of their slavery. They dishonor human labor, and make it a sign and source of servitude. They kill the idea and sentiment of human justice, ever tipping the balance to the side of triumphant knaves, privileged objects of divine indulgence. They kill human pride and dignity, protecting only the cringing and humble. They stifle in the heart of nations every feeling of human fraternity, filling it with divine cruelty instead.

You will find men like him in all the world’s religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.