If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.

The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

Not only is the atheist way more accurate and more truthful than the god-talk way, but it also confers great advantages. The first is that you feel very free. You are free to think your own thoughts and to have your own feelings. If a passing pastor accuses you of sinning, you feel free to rebuke or ignore him. You know that he has no special knowledge and that he is only betraying your common humanity by quoting gods. You know that no one has any special knowledge about the purpose or lack of purpose of the universe, that there is only scientific knowledge, with its limitations; the speculations of consciousness, with its limitations; and some amount of mystery, shared by us all and quite likely to remain unexplained until the end of time.

I am glad that you admit that a bad God is worse than no God. If so, the atheist is far better than the believer in Jehovah, and far better than the believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ—because I am perfectly satisfied that none but a bad God would threaten to say to any human soul, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” So that, before any Christian can be better than an atheist, he must reform his God.

The nonexistent gods above will ignore our prayers better this way.

S'il y a un Dieu, l'athéisme doit lui sembler une moindre injure que la religion.

No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

We are not really a godless bunch. We are just the sort who ignore the gods—probably in the unconscious hope that the gods will not notice us.

In fact, many professing agnostics are nearer belief in the true God than are many conventional church-goers who believe in a body that does not exist whom they miscall God.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.

Most atheists, if they worship anything, worship something which really exists but is not worthy of worship.

I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist.

[Letter to Max Otto]