We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

I wish I had the gift of religious faith. Sometimes I long to believe in a structured universe designed purposefully for mankind.

I tried to convince myself once, when I was a teenager, that I felt God. Alone in the sanctuary, accompanying my mom on an evening errand to the church. I stared at the ceiling and...

With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue...

The Face of the Skies”)

The padres set great store by addressing prayer to personal gods: ‘Genuine prayer exists only in religions in which there is a God as a person and a shape and endowed with a will.’That was...

I’m telling you, you really should stick to mating within your species, whatever that is.”I would,’ I said, ‘but unfortunately, there are no gorgeous, all-powerful, all-knowing gods around here. I’d even settle for a demigod....

It must be understood that in some cases the process by which a god or goddess degenerates into a fairy may occupy centuries, and that in the passage of generations such an alteration may be...

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful....

Man created god upon his thoughts to externalize, to give form to his belief to give a reason for what they could do. The gods stole away the energies, let man believe he was ruled...

There’s no god, it’s the elements that control this world and everything on it.

… It’s perfect! Locke would appreciate it.””Bug,” Calo said, “Locke is our brother and our love for him knows no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are ‘Locke would appreciate...

Om rubed his head. This wasn’t god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn’t a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped...

Accept the universeAs the gods gave it to you.If the gods wanted to give you something elseThey’d have done it.If there are other matters and other worldsThere are.

Wisdom comes through suffering.Trouble, with its memories of pain,Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,So men against their willLearn to practice moderation.Favours come to us from gods.

Away with all these gods and godlings; they are worse than useless.

May your dreams be gifts from the gods and may you open them with excitement and pleasure.

Curious about these new entities, the elementals asked why the gods were in the shape they were.”We are bipedal,” Erebus said. “We wish to be distinguished from the animals.””What are animals?” an elemental asked.”We’re not...

Poets create gods, philosophers destroy them.

So there was love, once. More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel. Gods have no words for such things. But love like that...

Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion...

Tasty darkness. Really.

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

Aeneas’ mother is a star?””No; a goddess.”I said cautiously, “Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus.”He thought it over....

The other day, when I was deciding where to place a mountain range, how to make a river’s flow detour around underground stalactite caves, and what precise color to give the sky at sunset, I...

One should not inquire too closely where ancient legends about the gods are concerned; many things which reason rejects acquire some color of probability once you bring a god into the story

If one believes in a god, one is a Theist. If one does not believe in a god, then one is an A-theist — he is without that belief. The distinction between atheism and theism...

He knew that he wielded magic as well as iron, and yet looked away from it, and made himself fables to explain his own presence in the world, and sought gods who might be more...

It made the woman feel like a thousand seas had come together from all worlds, like faraway lands had been bridged together, and the vastness of the known and the unknown were somehow easier to...

Women! Whether human or divine, what man can ever truly understand them?

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

Ni dieu ni maître!(Neither God nor master)[Feminist and labour slogan translated to ‘No gods, no masters’]

The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense.

That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That’ll teach me to go hide in a temple.

Shapeshifting requires the ability to transcend your attachments, in particular your ego attachments to identity and who you are. If you can get over your attachment to labeling yourself and your cherishing of your identity,...

The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, all things to us.

There are very few things that live in both this world and the world of dreams. Most are gods, angels and demons. The Stone you hold was made by Vlad Valkire the son of an...

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and...

The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.

I built them what they wanted and I made a profit off of it. Now they call me a god…What fools these mortals be.

I need no master to punish me in order to behave as I ought. If I did, I would be no more than a child who obeys his father’s rules only because he fears the...

A friend of Diagoras pointed out an expensive display of votive gifts and said, ‘You think the gods have no care for man? Why, you can see from all these votive pictures here how many...

It is not for the gods to decide whether or not Man exists – it is for Man to decide whether or not the gods exist.

Gods ir neaprakts līķis, ko cilvēce šodien bradā netīrām kājām.

I happen to be partial to humans – most, anyway. Clowns, not so much. Those evil bastards never stop smiling.

The Greeks were more preoccupied with, where these ousted gods resided. That is: The fallen son’s of God could go where humans were, but humans could not go where they were. According to Greek mythology,...

Men who thought of themselves as gods fell the farthest, and the hardest.

A modern culture built on the back of dying gods immerses me.

I can’t believe you cheated!” “I can’t believe you didn’t know it. Man, what kind of got are you? I never knew stupidity had a divine representative. Guess I was wrong, huh?” “You’re such an...

Atheism … goes back to the Ancient Greek (a — a negative prefix, theos — god), evidencing the antiquity of the outlook of those who saw no presence of God (or gods) in their everyday...