“To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is. […] I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.”

Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_jadms.html to John Adams (15 August 1820) <br class="br">1820s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Thomas Jefferson456

3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826

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“I am glad that you admit that a bad God is worse than no God. If so, the atheist is far better than the believer in Jehovah, and far better than the believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ—because I am perfectly satisfied that none but a bad God would threaten to say to any human soul, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” So that, before any Christian can be better than an atheist, he must reform his God.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

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“Because I say what is empirically true: nothing exists except God, I am deemed to be insane.”

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ibid, p. 28
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“There are those who deny me the right to speak of God, because I am not a believer. And I say that I have every right in the world. I want to talk about God because it is a problem that affects all humanity.”

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“"Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science, concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

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“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

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“I am a Unitarian. I believe in God. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Letter to Yale University (1899), quoted in Henry F. Pringle, William Howard Taft: The Life and Times, vol. 1, p. 45 (1939).

“When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. … When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon 9, as translated in The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (1999) by Hughes Oliphant Old, Ch. 9: The German Mystics, p. 448
Context: When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety.... When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is.

“My paintings are always images of my whole psychic makeup. You cannot deny yourself. You ask, am I painting myself? I'd been a swindler if I did otherwise. I'd be denying my existence as an artist. I've been also asked, what do you want to convey? And I say, nothing but my own nature... I am nothing but an optimist.”

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“Bullets and machine guns capable of daunting Duvalier do not exist. They cannot touch me… I am already an immaterial being. No foreigner is going to tell me what to do! If the OAS claims the right to intervene because of repressive conditions, why don't they land troops in Alabama?”

François Duvalier (1907–1971) 40th President of the Republic of Haiti

Quoted in Elizabeth Abbott, Haiti: An insider's history of the rise and fall of the Duvaliers (1988), p. 111.

“When I am in that darkness I do not remember anything about anything human, or the God-man, or anything which has a form. Nevertheless, I see all and I see nothing. As what I have spoken of withdraws and stays with me, I see the God-man. He draws my soul with great gentleness and he sometimes says to me: "You are I and I am you." I see, then, those eyes and that face so gracious and attractive as he leans to embrace me. In short, what proceeds from those eyes and that face is what I said that I saw in that previous darkness which comes from within, and which delights me so that I can say nothing about it. When I am in the God-man my soul is alive. And I am in the God-man much more than in the other vision of seeing God with darkness. The soul is alive in that vision concerning the God-man. The vision with darkness, however, draws me so much more that there is no comparison. On the other hand, I am in the God-man almost continually. It began in this continual fashion on a certain occasion when I was given the assurance that there was no intermediary between God and myself. Since that time there has not been a day or a night in which I did not continually experience this joy of the humanity of Christ.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, p. 205

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