J. D. Salinger Quotes

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

To this pass Christianity has come There is no God, and Jesus is his son.

It is interesting to me that the secularizers bend over backward in our federally controlled schools to keep atheists from being offended by the mention of God, prayer, or morality, yet over the federally controlled airwaves Christians can be offended every day of the week by the broadcasting of blasphemy against God and the Lord Jesus Christ or attacks on our moral values.

An atheist is but a mad, ridiculous derider of piety, but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.

The mocker of Art is the mocker of Jesus.

Don't compare me with Jesus. He is a great master, a great master.

Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.

One of the cardinal sins in our country is profanity -- the taking of the name of the Lord in vain. Reverence for the name of Deity is enjoined in holy writ. Jesus made this clear when teaching His disciples to pray. He said, addressing the Father, "Hallowed be thy name: (see Matthew 6:9). Blaspheming the name of God separates man from his Creator."

In New York, Catholic groups have forced an art gallery to shut down an exhibition of a six-foot image of Jesus in chocolate. So, the Archbishop of New York was very upset. He said, 'It is appalling to make Jesus out of food! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go bake some communion wafers.'

You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.

I'm always very self-conscious and assume the way faith or religion might come up in my plays will seem very harsh to people of faith, or who are currently practicing.

I don't know anyone less Jesus like than Christians.

People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)

Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified.

One had better put on gloves before handling the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it highly advisable.

If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?

To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.

You can't provoke, you can't insult the faith of others, you can't make fun of faith.

The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense.

The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

Freedom of expression does not extend to insulting the Prophets of Allah.

I was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burned. She took me there. The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth; The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. Weep not, child! cried my mother, for that man Has said, 'There is no God.'

The time has come for honest men to denounce false teachers and attack false gods.

Beware of the community in which blasphemy does not exist: underneath, atheism runs rampant.