Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
1769
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
Claimed by atheist Franklin Steiner, on p. 144 of one of his books to have appeared in Manford's Magazine but he never gives a year of publication.
Misattributed
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
1769
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 469 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
1920s
Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist
Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. II. "Mary in the Scriptures", pp. 18, 21
“I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men”
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"
“A totalitarian political religion is incompatible with free investigation.”
Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf
Gulf (p. 545)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken, p. 1017
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Source: Why I Am An Agnostic and Other Essays
“Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.”
Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror
Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 487
“Closing your mind to religion is no different than the close-mindedness that
religions can cause.”
Carlton Mellick III (1977) American writer
Source: Satan Burger