“I would be unelectable. I'm an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won't accept.”
Response on being asked if he would like to be President, in Deborah Solomon, " The Son Also Rises http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/magazine/27QUESTIONS.html", New York Times (27 June 2004).
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Ron Reagan4
talk radio host and political analyst 1958Related quotes
Louisa May Alcott book Little Women
Variant: I want to do something splendid... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.
Source: Little Women
“I'm an atheist: I don't know what it means to believe in God.”
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist
Source: Interview with Piergiorgio Odifreddi in Incontri con menti straordinarie (TEA, Milano, 2007), ISBN 978-88-502-1523-2.
Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer
"Pete Seeger's Session" http://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/music/2006/08/pete-seegers-session?p=2, a Beliefnet interview (2006)
Jannis Kounellis (1936–2017) Greek painter, sculptor and professor of arts
Quoted in Kristine Stiles & Peter Howard Selz: Theories and documents of contemporary art (1996) P.671
Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA
As quoted in response to the comment "For a miracle man, you're not very religious", in "10 questions for Lance Armstrong" by Bill Saporito in TIME magazine (28 September 2003)
George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States
Attributed by atheist activist Robert I. Sherman, reporting on remarks at a public press conference Bush held at O'Hare Airport on 27 August 1987 just after announcing his candidacy for president. Initially reported soon after the incident, years afterward disputes on the accuracy of the reports arose, as indicated at "Documents at Bush Presidential Library Prove VP Bush Questioned Citizenship and Patriotism of Atheists" (1 April 2006) at RobSherman.com https://web.archive.org/web/20150102092456/http://www.robsherman.com:80/advocacy/060401a.htm. Other journalists present have neither confirmed nor contradicted Sherman's account of the exchange. Sherman cites official correspondence about the incident between Jon Garth Murra, President of American Atheists, and White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray in December 1988, as clearly documenting that this was publicly reported prior to that time, and the accuracy of the remarks not contested, though implications of them in regard to actual stances on civil rights were. <br class="br">Frequently misquoted as "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." <br class="br">[1988, Fall, On the Barricades: Bush on Atheism, GALA Interim, Free Inquiry, 8, 4, 0272-0701, 16] <br class="br">[1990-10-22, Do We Want Atheist Army?, Tom, Tiede, Waycross Journal-Herald, 73, 250, 3, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KltaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yUwNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4651,702629] <br class="br">Disputed
“I'm sure Obama is an atheist, I’m sure Kennedy was an atheist, but I doubt if Pope Frank is.”
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
Interview with Bill Maher (2013) http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d2b_1382908273
Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
"Trouble Every Day".
Freak Out! (1966)
Variant: Hey, you know something people? I'm not black, but there's a whole lots a times I wish I could say I'm not white.