harmful beliefs Quotes

The evaporation of 4 million who believe in this crap would leave the world a better place.

For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

Religion is the root of quite a lot of evil.

To what great evils has religion been able to impel men.

When people are in the thrall of poisonous ideology, it's really not all about deliberate ill will, or inherent hatred, or a lack of intelligence. It's about the unbelievable destructiveness and staying power of bad ideas and about finding ways to equip people with the tools they need to fight them.

I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.

It's not what we don't know that hurts us, people say. It's what we believe is true that isn't that does the damage.

There are …, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth.

Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Extremism, under whatever guise, fanaticism of whatever kind, factionalism of whatever persuasion would be faithful, poisonous plants and the soil of our country which will not be allowed to flourish.

I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.

I never had a spirit-breaking, soul-destroying religion drummed into me.

It is time we realize that belief is not a private matter. As a man believes, so he will act. Believe that you are a member of a chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these infidels—and flying a plane into a building is only a matter of being asked to do it.

So much wrong could religion induce.

All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of children.

Religion is the root of so much misery in the world, and I've always thought there is lack of criticism against it.

Which is better: to have fun with fungi or to have Idiocy with ideology, to have wars because of words, to have tomorrow's misdeeds out of yesterday's miscreeds?

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.

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.

I actually grew up thinking that sex was absolutely terrifying and that it would kill you.

I was taught that pain is bad.

My experience as a pastor is lots of people have really toxic, dangerous, psychologically devastating images of God in their head, images of a God who's not good.

I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.