Particles in fact, don’t exist. Consider for example, a particle we all know and love, the electron. They’re all the same. You know if you produced an electron on the other side of the Universe, and you brought it here and compared it with an electron, they’re the same. Not in the same way that you pick up two red billiard balls and say, “These are pretty similar.” We say they’re identical. This is because the electron as a separate, distinct entity…doesn’t really exist, they are merely bumps in something called “field” which is a property of space and time. And if it’s true for the fundamental particles in nature, it’s true for everything that makes them up, including us. And so at some level, we don’t exist.
Dr. Steve Biller, Physicist, Mansfield College, University of Oxford Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

No one in the world was born to have fun.
Ali Ghiasian, Taxi Driver

Everything created is one thought in the life of God.
Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, Jerusalem

The one thing we can say about God is that he exists. He is. He exists in a state of absolute-isness.
Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, Jerusalem

If an individual has faith that he is Napoleon, then you say he’s loony. But if a hundred million people have faith in some god, then because it’s a hundred million, you’re supposed to respect it. But there’s actually no more evidence for God, than for the lunatic’s belief that he’s Napoleon.
Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist & Author, The God Delusion

Maybe [the Universe] did need an entity to start it, but it’s a very, very different thing to go from there, to saying that entity was a God, a conscious being, an intelligence, the kind of thing that forgives sins and answers prayers. That is the most preposterous piece of lazy, succumbing to wishful thinking, that you could imagine.
Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist & Author, The God Delusion

The truth can be offensive, Jesus offended people.
Brother Jed Smock, Confrontational Evangelist

God’s going to cast you vagina lickers into hell lickity split.
Brother Jed Smock, Confrontational Evangelist

The most loving thing that God can do to the nonbeliever is to send them to hell.
Brother Jed Smock, Confrontational Evangelist

In the book of Proverbs in the Bible it says, “The mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit.” You might want to write that down.
Cindy Smock, Evangelist, Wife of Brother Jed Smock

The fact that we all suffer from the day we’re born to the day that we expire…is funny.
Joe Keyes, Playwright

What matters is not what we think our purpose is, but that we feel like we’re part of a purpose that is greater than ourselves.
Orson Scott Card, Author, Ender’s Game

For me, religion is like the banana skin and spirituality is the banana. Today we have thrown away the banana and are holding onto the skin.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Art of Living Foundation, Bangalore, India

Happiness is realizing your true nature.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Art of Living Foundation, Bangalore, India

Truth prevails, not the majority.
Dr. Zakir Naik, Founder, Islamic Research Foundation

Faith is where you believe in something until it’s been proven to you that it’s true.
Rollo Maughfling, Archdruid of Stonehenge

Happiness is a byproduct of having purpose and meaning, it isn’t a goal.
Julia Sweeney, Actor, Writer, Monologist (Letting Go of God)

Our brains want to make sense of things. So we come up with answers, whether they’re true or not.
Julia Sweeney, Actor, Writer, Monologist (Letting Go of God)

Sometimes people pray hard for a miracle and a miracle happens. A miracle meaning something very, very unlikely. But the most unlikely thing of all would be if no unlikely things happened.
Leonard Susskind, professor of theoretical physics, Stanford University, co-discovered string theory.

Nobody can really be happy. You can have moments of happiness, moments of joy, but life is very difficult–unless you’re a total idiot, then you can be happy.
Irvin Kershner, Film Director, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

I know that in the world there are many, many religions. I know my religion is the true religion. To believe in Christ is not easy…but not impossible.
Monsignor Domenico D’Ambrosio Archbishop of Manfredonia

Jesus looked just like Middle Easterners. His skin tone was probably as dark, if not darker than mine.
Reverend Clinton J. Edison, New Zion Missionary Baptist Church and Holy Smoke Barbecue Restaurant, Huntsville, TX

We are first species to become aware of our own inevitable demise.
Matthew Alper, Neuro-theologis, author of The God Part of the Brain

There is no secret!
Big Lenny Timpone, Chef, Santarpio’s Pizza, Boston

Let me spend a day in your life and I’ll tell you what you believe in. Because the way you live your life is what you believe in.
Satyen Raja, Spiritual Guru President, Warrior Sage

Whether you end up swept away by fate or recognized as some great hero of destiny — you’re going to be f#&*ing forgotten.
Aha, Spiritual Guru and Transpersonal Undoing Agent

A world with only happiness is a world with no point.
Chloe Revery, 7th Grader

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Father Paul Bernadicou, S.J., Chair, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco

One of our purposes is to witness the universe.
Sylvester James Gates, Jr., John S. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

In science whenever we see a diversity of viewpoints, at the end of the day they all become unified because there’s one reality. If religion is talking about something that is external to us, then all of them will likely follow, I believe, a similar path.
Sylvester James Gates, Jr., John S. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

I sometimes think that God wonders, “What have I done?”
Reverend Dr. Jo Hudson, Cathedral of Hope Church, Dallas, Texas

Examine everything you read and everything you listen to and ask yourself, “Is this creating fear? In me and in our world? Or is it creating hope.”
Reverend Dr. Jo Hudson, Cathedral of Hope Church, Dallas, Texas

I take the concept of God as a challenge, not an answer.
Joel Primack, Astrophysicicist, University of California, Santa Cruz, co-authored the Theory of Cold Dark Matter

Non-existence has nothing to recommend it.
Larry Niven, Author, Ringworld

The opposite of faith is a tendency to ask questions.
Larry Niven, Author, Ringworld

There are over a thousand religions because no one religion has exterminated the rest.
Larry Niven, Author, Ringworld

Religion has not been able to stop sin.
Javed Akhtar, Urdu and Hindi (Hindustani) poet, lyricist and scriptwriter from India

The strength of your belief should depend on the strength of the evidence.
Professor David L. Wark, FRS, Professor of Physics, Imperial College London and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxford, England

The simple difference between spirituality and religion is, you won’t kill anybody for having a slightly different version of spirituality.
Professor David L. Wark, FRS, Professor of Physics, Imperial College London and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxford, England

The punishment for sin is enjoyment.
Magus Peter H. Gilmore, High Priest, Church of Satan, New York, NY

Black people pray more than anybody else in the world. But what do they have to show for their prayers? They got big churches, they got wealthy ministers, but how come the streets are dirty? How come our children are not in school? How come children are killing each other on the street?
Amiri Baraka, Author, Activist, former New Jersey Poet Laureate

The whole of philosophy is summed up in truth at any cost.
Gandhi

Religion is an attempt to recover the security of infancy.
David Wulff, Professor of Psychology, Wheaton College, author of the textbook The Psychology of Religion, Norton, Massachusetts

Happiness seems to be related to several different neural transmitters such as dopamine and serotonin.
Dr. Andrew Newberg, Director of Clinical Nuclear Medicine, Director of NeuroPET Research, and Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, author of Why God Won’t Go Away

Religions are simple schools of thought for management of societies at large.
Kanwer Deep Singh of the Sikh temple, Gurdwara sis ganj, in Delhi, India

If you are already in the sorrowful condition, you are already in hell, if you are happy, you are already in heaven.
His Holiness Swami Chaitanyananda

The God of Spinoza, the God of Einstein…is our ability to understand nature. That’s how we worship what is sacred, what is holy, by trying to find the deepest understanding of nature. Our bias against this is so strong you can hear it in the word “supernatural” — above the natural. As if our fantasies and our little stories that we make up, whether we made them up 10,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago, or this week, as if our stories could compete with the reality of nature as revealed by science.
Ann Druyan Co-Writer & Co-Producer, Contact

We had two people who thought they were the Messiah, both on the same ward. They ended up in a great big punch up because one said, “I’m the Messiah.” And the other said, “No, I’m the Messiah.” And they had to be separated by the nurses.
Reverend Canon Michael Law Former Hospital Chaplain

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