Say What?

“Many of those people involved in Adolf Hitler were Satanists. Many were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together.”

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

“I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you...It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.” (on Walt Disney World’s “Gay Days”)

—Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

—Greek philosopher Epicurus

“A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”

“Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”

“The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”

“Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.”

“What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?”

—Martin Luther, reformer (1483–1546)

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

—Richard Dawkins, ethologist and author

“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

“One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.”

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”

“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” —G. K. Chesterton, British author

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”

—Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”

“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”

“Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”

“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”

“When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”

“Every time I have wanted to tell the truth—that I have no faith—the words just do not come—my mouth remains closed. And yet I still keep on smiling at God and all.”

“Thank God for the tsunami, and thank God that two thousand dead Swedes are fertilizing the ground over there [in Asia]. How many of these two thousand, do you suppose, were fags and dykes? This is how the Lord deals with His enemies. And the Lord has got some enemies. And Sweden heads the list. You filthy Swedes. You filthy Swedes!”

“Thank God for 9/11. Thank God that, five years ago, the wrath of God was poured out upon this evil nation. America, land of the sodomite damned. We thank thee, Lord God Almighty, for answering the prayers of those that are under the altar.”

—Fred Phelps, American Baptist minister

“It is better for a girl to marry in such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.”

“If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, an ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrements become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed and as quickly as possible and burned.”

“Americans are the great Satan, the wounded snake.”

—Ayatollah Khomeini