James Randi Quotes

This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition

Our society has lost confidence in the power of reason, except perhaps scientific reason.

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic.

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

Embrace truth as it is revealed to-day by human reason.

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

Science when well-digested is nothing but good sense and reason.

I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion - I am fighting for reason.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

My background is basically scientific math. My Dad was a physicist, so I have it in my blood somewhere. Scientific method is very important to me. I think anything that contradicts it is probably not true.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.

I cannot live on myths; somehow, science convinces me more easily. I am prone to lean towards science, ethics, and philosophy rather than myth, religion, and rituals.

I believe in the religion of reason -- the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world.

An atheist is a man who looks through a telescope and tries to explain what he can't see.

If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

I believe in things that have proof.

Today the intelligence of the world denies the miraculous. Ignorance is the soil of the supernatural. The foundation of Christianity has crumbled, has disappeared, and the entire fabric must fall. The natural is true. The miraculous is false.

In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.