Dalai Lama Quotes

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

The secular mind is God's huge gift to us, for us to use for the sake of one another.

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

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.

When it comes to me I follow the religion of humanity.

School has no task more important than to teach strict thought, cautious judgment, and logical conclusions, hence it must pay no attention to what hinders these operations, such as religion, for instance.

I don't respect religon. I don't respect superstitious thinking and that is what religous is.

I am very hostile to religion because it is enormously dominant, especially in American life. And I don't buy the argument that, well, it's harmless. I think it is harmful, partly because I care passionately about what's true.

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.

Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.

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.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.

I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.

the leading error of the human mind, - the bane of human happiness - the perverter of human virtue ... is Religion - that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion - that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion - that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion - that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!

Stripping away the irrational, the illogical, and the impossible, I am left with atheism. I can live with that.

Secularism does not accept many things as absolutes. Its principal objectives are pleasure and self-interest. Often, those who embrace secularism have a different look about them.

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.

Man can know his world without falling back on revelation; he can live his life without feeling his utter dependence on supernatural powers.

From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism.

Humanists are not characteristically strong in faith, hope and love.

If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself.

Our secularism is hard-won, the product of centuries of political, intellectual, and sometimes physical courage. Secularism is the institutionalization of doubt, or more precisely of respect for doubt. It is harder to love doubt than to love freedom. So we are grudging about our secularism, and some of us are a little ashamed of it.

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.