Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

• “An atheist believes that a hospital
  should be built instead of a church.
  An atheist believes that deed must
  be done instead of prayer said.
  An atheist strives for involvement in life
  and not escape into death.
  He wants disease conquered,
  poverty vanished, war eliminated.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  277 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  85 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement

• “I'll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive.
  
  And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  49 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “This religion gives you goals which are outside of reality. It enriches your fantasy life with ugliness. It fills you with ideas of guilt over the most common human experiences -- usually related to sex. In this room, right now, each of you, in your own lives, has agonized over the fact that you have masturbated. Masturbation isn't sinful. If it feels good -- do it. You have my blessing, and you yourself know how it relaxes you.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  21 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “I told my kids I just want three words on my tombstone, if I have one. I'll probably be cremated. One is "woman." I'm very comfortable in that role. I've loved being a woman, I've loved being a mother, I've loved being a grandmother. I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  18 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “An Atheist is a person who questions every kind of authority, and this is the thing that is important. Because if we can, without blinking an eye, question the ultimate authority, god - who must be obeyed, then we can question the authority of the state, we can question the authority of a university structure, we can question the authority of our employer, we can question anything. So I think the primary thing that an Atheist is, is a person who looks at an authoritarian idea, or an authority structure, and says to that authority structure: from whence do you derive your authority and why should I be obedient to you? It appears to me that if I have human intelligence that this is enough for me to try to challenge whatever you're doing.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  12 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  9 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “On the issue of censorship of pornography and rock music, do you see that as a religious issue, too?
  
  Yes, I do. Incidentally, I don't like rock music. I never have liked it. I have never understood it, and I can't hear the lyrics. I think that most people can't hear them either. I'm still stuck with Chopin and Beethoven and Bach, and all those old ones. The whole point is, I feel that everyone who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able to say anything or do anything, within the limits of not hurting another person. And I don't see how rock music hurts anybody, or I don't see that pornography hurts anybody.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “I don't care whether I succeed or whether I fail as long as I am trying. I hope that I succeed.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “Oh, one of the things that I am most proud of is that people can say, "I am an atheist," in the United States today, without being called a Communist atheist, or an atheist Communist. I separated those two words. I think that's probably the best thing that I did. The other thing is, of course, that we are developing something that we call "modern atheism," or "American atheism," which is entirely different from the materialism of the Greek philosophers. What we are interested in is moving out, in order to see that there is a more viable life cycle for all people, and that the human condition can be ameliorated somewhat by human beings working in concert to do something. We must do something about the pollution. We must do something about the waste. We have to do something about the greed. We must stop war. And we're not going to do any of those things as long as we feel the solution is to go to church on Sunday, or funnel our energy into prayer or religious solutions. Everybody has to get mixed up in the problems, to try to solve them.”

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement