“There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.”

“I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

“The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly. Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely Godism turned upside down.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

“Pure Mathematics is the class of all propositions of the form “p implies q,” where p and q are propositions containing one or more variables, the same in the two propositions, and neither p nor q contains any constants except logical constants. And logical constants are all notions definable in terms of the following: Implication, the relation of a term to a class of which it is a member, the notion of such that, the notion of relation, and such further notions as may be involved in the general notion of propositions of the above form. In addition to these, mathematics uses a notion which is not a constituent of the propositions which it considers, namely the notion of truth.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

“One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”

Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) French writer

“To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

“De Lubac discusses an atheism which means to suppress this searching, he says, “even including the problem as to what is responsible for the birth of God in human consciousness.””

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

“Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume