{"quotes":[{"text":"[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. Iv, p. 327).","author":"Thomas Jefferson","tags":["freethinker","freethought","insanity","inspired","skeptic","skepticism","socrates"],"id":8877,"author_id":"Thomas+Jefferson"},{"text":"If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820].","author":"Thomas Jefferson","tags":["cruel","fake","freethinker","freethought","god-of-abraham","imposter","jehovah","judaism","lies","new-testament","reason","skeptic","skepticism","yahweh"],"id":26060,"author_id":"Thomas+Jefferson"},{"text":"Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare.This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false.","author":"Kurt Vonnegut Jr.","tags":["atheist","clemens-vonnegut","freethinker","funeral","science","skeptic"],"id":61646,"author_id":"Kurt+Vonnegut+Jr."},{"text":"Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.","author":"Joris-Karl Huysmans","tags":["courage","religion","skeptic"],"id":72202,"author_id":"Joris-Karl+Huysmans"},{"text":"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?","author":"Douglas Adams","tags":["atheism","religion","skeptic"],"id":133742,"author_id":"Douglas+Adams"},{"text":"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["atheism","reason","science","skeptic"],"id":168421,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"Searching for truth without skepticism, is like having sex without a genital.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["brainy","pursuit-of-truth","reasoning","search-for-truth","skeptic","skepticism","skeptics","truth"],"id":177195,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"To love at a distance and without hope; never to possess; to dream chastely of pale charms and impossible kisses extinguished on the waxen brow of death: ah, that is something like it. A delicious straying away from the world, and never the return. As only the unreal is not ignoble and empty, existence must be admitted to be abominable. Yes, imagination is the only good thing which heaven vouchsafes to the skeptic and pessimist, alarmed by the eternal abjectness of life.","author":"Joris-Karl Huysmans","tags":["abject","abjectness","abominable","charms","chaste","chastity","death","distance","dream","empty","emptyness","eternal","existence","heaven","hope","hopelessness","ignoble","imagination","kiss","kisses","life","love","pale","pessimism","pessimist","possess","skeptic","skepticism","unreal","world"],"id":185850,"author_id":"Joris-Karl+Huysmans"},{"text":"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.","author":"Sam Harris","tags":["faith","reason","religion","science","skeptic"],"id":245837,"author_id":"Sam+Harris"},{"text":"[On David Hume]Although he never admitted to being an atheist as such, he was clearly and unquestionably the most vividly elegant skeptic of them all.","author":"Jonathan Miller","tags":["atheism","atheist","david-hume","elegant","skeptic"],"id":248427,"author_id":"Jonathan+Miller"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":27,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}