Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein

I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in Nature.
Albert Einstein

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religions we call false were once true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot, or he can but does not want to. If he wants to but cannot he is impotent. If he can but does not want to, he is wicked. If he neither can nor wants to, then he is both powerless and wicked.
Epicurus, c300 BC

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.
Desiderius Erasmus

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Desiderius Erasmus

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
James Feibleman

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard Feynman

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress
Richard Feynman

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
Richard Feynman

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France

We are all born ignorant, but we must work hard to remain stupid.
Benjamin Franklin

In 1736 I lost one of my Sons, a fine Boy of 4 Years old, by the Small Pox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation; This I mention for the Sake of Parents, who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.
Benjamin Franklin

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
Benjamin Franklin

So you're offended. So fucking what?
Stephen Fry (talking about religious objections to free speech)

In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.
J. William Fullbright

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
John Kenneth Galbraith

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures but with experiments and demonstrations.
Galileo Galilei

No theory is too false, no fable so absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become imbedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate their children, all at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.
Henry George (1839 - 1897)

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
André Gide

It is harder to conceal ignorance than to acquire knowledge.
Arnold Glasgow

Doubt grows with knowledge.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The coward only threatens when he is safe.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Stephen Jay Gould

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould

The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion.
Stephen Jay Gould

People may believe correct things for the damndest and weirdest of wrong reasons.
Stephen Jay Gould

Religion once ruled the world. It was called the Dark Ages.
Ruth Green

There must be some limit to the thing. It cannot go on to infinity. (Es muss ein Ende geben, es kann nicht bis ins Unendliche weitergehen).
Samuel Hahnemann (to Dr Schreter, Sept 13th 1829, Writing about Homeopathic Dilutions)

Four stages of acceptance:
i) this is worthless nonsense,
ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view,
iii) this is true, but quite unimportant,
iv) I always said so.
J.B.S. Haldane

Science is not a philosophy or a belief, it is just a practical method of figuring out how the world works, a method that has demonstrated its worth and its ability to predict.
Harriet Hall

People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.
Laurell K. Hamilton

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
Sam Harris

There is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
Sam Harris

The history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science.
Sam Harris

[Science is] the desire to know causes.
William Hazlitt

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
George Hegel

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.
Heinrich Heine

Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
Hippocrates

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Christopher Hitchens

If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right.
Christopher Hitchens

[Science is] the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
Thomas Hobbes

That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
P. C. Hodgell