A Quoteload of Seasonal Quotable Quotes of the Quippy and Quirky Variety

“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
O! ’tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1757.

“Jesus wasn’t a Christian, and he never preached in a church. He was also a drinker, and liked to hang out with sinners. We think of him very highly in the Church of Stop Shopping. We put him right up there with Lenny Bruce.”
— Reverend Billy

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”
— Lenny Bruce (or, these days, tiny syringes.)

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
— Lenny Bruce

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to the garage makes you a car.”
— Dr. Laurence J. Peter

“Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?”
— Jules Feiffer

“Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.”
— Butch Hancock

“To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals.”
— Don Schrader

“Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.”
— Andrew Lias

“The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child.’ A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is ‘Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.’ It does not mean ‘Beat the shit out of your child or he will become rotten’ as many fundamentalist parents seem to believe.”
— Author Unknown

“I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Eskimo earnestly, ‘did you tell me?'”
— Annie Dillard

“Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.”
— Author Unknown

“Most sermons sound to me like commercials — but I can’t make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.”
— Mignon McLaughlin, “The Second Neurotic’s Notebook,” 1966.

“Christianity is not a religion; it’s an industry.”
— Author Unknown

“God must have loved the people in power, for he made them so much like their own image of Him.”
— Kenneth Patchen

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
— Anne Lamott

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
— Seneca the Younger

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.”
— Blaise Pascal

“I believe in God; I just don’t trust anyone who works for him.”
— Author Unknown

“If triangles had a God, He’d have three sides.”
— Yiddish Proverb

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
— Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999.

“All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”
— Cathy Ladman

“An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.”
— Robert Ingersoll

“There is no point in saying that one should not doubt or one should believe. Just to say ‘I believe’ does not mean that you understand and see… To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.”
— Walpola Rahula, “What the Buddha Taught.”

“I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.”
— Doug McLeod

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
— Epicurus

“God wanted to have a holiday, so He asked St. Peter for suggestions on where to go. ‘Why not go to Jupiter?’ asked St. Peter. ‘No, too much gravity, too much stomping around,’ said God. ‘Well, how about Mercury?’ ‘No, it’s too hot there.’ ‘Okay,’ said St. Peter, ‘what about Earth?’ ‘No,’ said God, ‘They’re such horrible gossips. When I was there 2000 years ago, I had an affair with a Jewish woman, and they’re still talking about it.'”
— Author Unknown

“How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones.”
— Samuel Beckett in “Happy Days,” Act 1 (1961).

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
— Voltaire

“Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on.”
— Author Unknown

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”
— Mark Twain

“There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said ‘Let us pray,’ and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible.”
— Desmond M. Tutu, “Religious Human Rights and the Bible.”

“But who prays for Satan? Who has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
— Mark Twain

“The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.”
— Charles C. Colton

“Every minute of every day, some human being somewhere in the world is innocently violating some sacred tenet of some past or present religion.”
— Arris Jaye

“Thank God I’m an atheist.”
— Louis Bunuel

“If you want a better world, be a better person.”
— Quentin Crisp

“Instead of being born again, why not just grow up?”
— Author Unknown