Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American activist supporting atheism and separation of church and state. In 1963 she founded American Atheists and served as its president until 1986, after which her son Jon Garth Murray succeeded her. She created the first issues of American Atheist Magazine.

O'Hair is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which challenged the policy of mandatory prayers and Bible reading in Baltimore public schools, in which she named her first son William J. Murray as plaintiff. Consolidated with Abington School District v. Schempp , it was heard by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that officially sanctioned mandatory Bible-reading in American public schools was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court had prohibited officially sponsored prayer in schools in Engel v. Vitale on similar grounds. Through American Atheists, O'Hair filed numerous other suits on issues of separation of church and state.

In 1995, O'Hair, her second son Jon Garth Murray , and her granddaughter and adopted daughter Robin Murray O'Hair , disappeared from Austin, Texas. Garth Murray withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars from American Atheists' funds, and there was speculation that the trio had absconded. David Roland Waters, a convicted felon and former employee of American Atheists, was convicted of murdering O'Hair, Jon Garth Murray, and Robin Murray O'Hair. The bodies were not found until Waters led authorities to their burial place following his conviction. Wikipedia  

✵ 13. April 1919 – 29. September 1995
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Madalyn Murray O'Hair: 9   quotes 3   likes

Famous Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

“One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times.... He is beyond human forgiveness.”

Quoted without citation by Ted Dracos, UnGodly: The Passions, Torments, and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (2003), on her son William's rejection of atheism and conversion to Christianity and new calling as a traveling evangelist.
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“Marx was wrong--religion is not the opiate of the masses, baseball is.”

Quoted without citation by Nathaniel J. Ehrlich, Psychology and contemporary affairs, p. 78 (1972)
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