Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.
— Carl SaganWe need more moral compasses and less Sat Navs.
— Dean CavanaghFrom the moment that man submits God to moral judgment, he kills Him his own heart.
— Albert CamusFor some people a thing may be right, and for others it may be wrong. There is no greater truth to morality -it is merely an opinion.
— Katherine EwellDon't judge me. Ethics and morality no longer exist in our world. It's a luxury of the past, afforded only to those who had a future.
— T.M. WilliamsSome Christians say god is the source of morality, these people have clearly never read the bible.
— Gabriel NeilAt the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality—law is something which is shaped and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: morality is higher than law! Law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth, and present it in the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned.
— Aleksandr SolzhenitsynYou can't have it both ways. Either you believe in my god or you go to hell.
— Bangambiki HabyarimanaYour conscience is your morality, expressed.
— Donald L. HicksThere is a sense in which all cognition can be said to be motivated. One is motivated to understand the world, to be in touch with reality, to remove doubt, etc. Alternately one might say that motivation is an aspect of cognition itself. Nevertheless, motives like wanting to find the truth, not wanting to be mistaken, etc., tend to align with epistemic goals in a way that many other commitments do not. As we have begun to see, all reasoning may be inextricable from emotion. But if a person's primary motivation in holding a belief is to hue to a positive state of mind, to mitigate feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, or guilt for instance. This is precisely what we mean by phrases like 'wishful thinking', and 'self-deception'. Such a person will of necessity be less responsive to valid chains of evidence and argument that run counter to the beliefs he is seeking to maintain. To point out non-epistemic motives in an others view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt on a persons connection to the world as it is.
— Sam Harris