Mircea Eliade Quotes

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

I've been so relieved and so grateful to not have a god to believe in.

Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.

I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.

It is an attitude—an attitude, that is to say, of freedom and even of defiance of the universe. It is really a protest against the entire outlook of the ancient world. Briefly it is the discovery of man.

The most fundamental strength of India is that we are a land of seekers. Seekers of truth and liberation. Not a land of believers. We are a godless nation.

Society must fight against this belief in God as it fought against idol worship and other narrow conceptions of religion. In this way man will try to stand on his feet. Being realistic, he will have to throw his faith aside and face all adversaries with courage and valour. That is exactly my state of mind.

Clearly, Enlightenment thinkers were seeking a God substitute.

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*

Secular humanism proposes ... the complete implementation of the agenda of modernism ... what is necessary for it to occur is a ... New Enlightenment.

The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last.

We have fought long and hard to escape from medieval superstition. I, for one, do not wish to go back.

If you're an atheist, you know, you believe, this is the only life you're going to get. It's a precious life. It's a beautiful life. Its something we should live to the full, to the end of our days. Where if you're religious and you believe in another life somehow, that means you don't live this life to the full because you think you're going to get another one. That's an awfully negative way to live a life. Being a atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily and fully

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

God is dead not because He doesn't exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He doesn't.

Sometimes identity can be your salvation. It can be liberating to find your place in the world, but at some point, identity can hold you back.

The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.

I want to incite people to loosen their oppression by giving them something to work with, to build on. They shouldn't be frightened of creating themselves - that's why I make things very open, with things for people to do.

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust.

I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."