Quotations - Atheism

"Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative." - G.K. Chesterton, "Charles II" Twelve Types

"It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian." - G.K. Chesterton, "Introductory Remarks" Heretics

"There is no bigot like the atheist." - G.K. Chesterton, Magic

"The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism." - G.K. Chesterton, "Frozen Free Thought" The Well and the Shallows

"An interesting essay might be written on the possession of an atheistic literary style. There is such a thing. The mark of it is that wherever anything is named or described, such words are chosen as suggest that the thing has not got a soul in it. Thus they will not talk of love or passion, which imply a purpose and a desire. They talk of the "relations" of the sexes, as if they were simply related to each other in a certain way, like a chair and a table. Thus they will not talk of the waging of war (which implies a will), but of the outbreak of war - as if it were a sort of boil. Thus they will not talk of masters paying more or less wages, which faintly suggests some moral responsibility in the masters: they will talk of the rise and fall of wages, as if the thing were automatic, like the tides of the sea. Thus they will not call progress an attempt to improve, but a tendency to improve. And thus, above all, they will not call the sympathy between oppressed nations sympathy; they will call it solidarity. For that suggests brick and coke, and clay and mud, and all the things they are fond of." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 12-7-12

"Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle." - G.K. Chesterton, "Wells and the World State" What I Saw in America

"There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life." - G.K. Chesterton, ILN 1-3-31

"I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification." - G.K. Chesterton, "Babies and Distributism" The Well and the Shallows

"Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred." - G.K. Chesterton, "The Meaning of Dreams" Lunacy and Letters

"Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist." - G.K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - G.K. Chesterton, Where All Roads Lead