MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable.

The relationships that people have - that are sexual, psychological, emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents, schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that.

I feel that everyone has a right to be insane.

No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time - nor ever will.

I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.

I feel that everyone who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able to say anything or do anything, within the limits of not hurting another person.

Religion is induced insanity.

Religion has caused more misery to all men in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint.

As I grew a little bit older and got interested in law, I read that Clarence Darrow didn't believe in the Bible either. So I read everything he had ever written, all of his trials, everything - to search out the philosophy of his disbelief.But I couldn't find it.

I don't think the Church has ever contributed anything to anybody, anyplace, at any time.

If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it. There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised.

I can't deny that I was an intellectual prostitute along the way many, many times in college. I can remember one examination where they said. "Describe the Devil," and in order to get 12 points on that question one had to say that the Devil was red and had a forked tail and cloven hoofs and fangs and horns on his head. So I merrily wrote this answer down and got my 12 points. I always got straight hundreds in Bible study.

I was overwhelmed by the number of calls we got from people offering to rent us houses, to take us out to dinner, to drive us around house hunting. Everyone was just indescribably kind in Havaii. Finally we moved into a house offered to us for an incredible $125 a month by a man who feels that the separation of church and state is a valid constitutional issue which should be fought for.

Atheism is a very positive affirmation of man's ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems.

I decided that if nobody else was going to do anything to rectify this colossal inequity in taxation, I'd have to do it myself. So I instituted a suit against the city of Baltimore demanding that the city assessor be specifically ordered to assess the Church for its vast property holdings in the city, and that the city tax collector then be instructed to collect the taxes once the assessment has been made.

My son Bill, who came to me in 1960-he was 14 then, quoted the old parable to me: "It is not by their words, but by their deeds that ye shall know them" -pointing out that if I was a true atheist, I would not permit the public schools of America to force him to read the Bible and say prayers against his will. He was right.

I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend - just as if it were a novel - very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.

Engineers have a very limited education and background, I think you need to move into the broader humanities in order to become a total person.

There are good, humanitarian people everywhere - occasionally even in the Church.

Male say they're looking for a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad, but what they really want, and usually get, is an empty-headed little chick who's very young and very physical -and very submissive.

I can't pinpoint a period in history or a place in the universe where religion has actually helped the welfare of man.

One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. . . . He is beyond human forgiveness.

Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education and science to take over.