110+ Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes On Religion, Marriage And Death

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American activist and writer known for her role in the 1960s court case which led to the abolition of mandatory prayer in US public schools. She was a prominent atheist activist and the founder of American Atheists, the first nationwide atheist organization in the United States. She was also a prolific writer, publishing several books and numerous articles on atheism, separation of church and state, and other related topics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Madalyn Murray O'Hair on religion, marriage, death.

Top 10 Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

1. Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
2. An Atheists loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist thinks that heaven is something for which we should work for now - here on earth - for all men together to enjoy.
3. Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.
4. The fear of hell is the basis for the Christian faith.
5. ... religion is a crutch, and only the crippled need crutches.
6. You hate me because I am the embodiment of all your doubts.
7. This crusade to separate church and state is only one expression of my raison d'être. I'm an atheist, but I'm also an anarchist, and a feminist, and an integrationist.
8. I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.
9. Atheism is a very positive affirmation of man's ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems.
10. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair Short Quotes

• No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time - nor ever will.
• The agnostic is gutless and prefers to keep one safe foot in the god camp.
• Well, we are men. Let's start acting like it.
• Words divorced from action supporting them are meaningless and hypocritical.
• 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 Quotes About Religion

Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education and science to take over. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Atheism is based upon a materialist philosophy, which holds that nothing exists but natural phenomena. There are no supernatural forces or entities, nor can there be any. Nature simply exists. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Religion is induced insanity. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Marx was wrong--religion is not the opiate of the masses, baseball is. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I'm atheist because religion is a crutch, and only the crippled need crutches. I can get around perfectly well on my own two feet, and so can everyone else with a backbone and a grain of common sense. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The atheist realizes that there must not only be an acceptance of his right to hold his opinion, but that ultimately his is the job to turn his culture from religion, to eliminate those irrational ideas which have held the human race in intellectual slavery. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Organizing atheists is like hurding cats — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I can't pinpoint a period in history or a place in the universe where religion has actually helped the welfare of man. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes About Atheist

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

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

Atheists have an excellent longevity record because we have no place to go after we die, so we take good care of ourselves and our world while we are here. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Actually, I don't like Atheists very much - at least most of them ~ because they are not motivated to move into the community and attempt to correct the injustices which are everywhere apparent against them. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The atheist must abandon his defensive positions, take up the cudgels and go forward, rather than into the retreat of apathy. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

When I learned that there was such a thing as an atheist, I looked it up - and found out that the definition fitted me to a tee. Finally, at the age of 24, I found out who and what I was. Better late than never. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I went into the Army, and one day, in the middle of a bull session, somebody called me an atheist. Believe it or not, it was the first time I'd ever heard the word. It goes to show you how a person can grow up in America and have a college education and still not know a goddamned thing. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

There is no God. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I think this word 'disbelieve' would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody were an atheist or an agnostic or a humanist - his or her own particular brand - but as for compelling people to this, absolutely not. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes About Church

The most heinous crime of the Church has been perpetrated not against churchmen but against churchgoers. With its poisonous concepts of sin and divine punishment, it's warped and brainwashed countless millions. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The relationships that people have - that are sexual, psychological, emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents, schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If this taxation exemptions for Church were rescinded, our property taxes would be substantially lowered, and those who rent houses and apartments would consequently be able to pass along this savings in the form of lowered rents. It could have a profoundly salubrious effect on the entire economy. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Once involved in the school-prayer fight, I rapidly became aware of, and appalled by, the political and economic power of the Church in America -all based on the violation of one of our nation's canon laws: the separation of church and state. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

There are good, humanitarian people everywhere - occasionally even in the Church. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The history of the Church has been a history of divisiveness, repression and reaction. For almost 2000 years, Christianity has held mankind back in politics, in economics, in industry, in science, in philosophy, in culture. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I don't think the Church has ever contributed anything to anybody, anyplace, at any time. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Quite apart from the Church's financial self-interest in getting me out of the way, Baltimore is an overwhelmingly Catholic city and like most good Christians, they felt we ought to be punished for our unorthodox views. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes About Feel

I'm thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can't cop out by foisting it off on God. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I feel that everyone has a right to be insane. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

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. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I don't feel that people should glom onto other people. I feel that relationships should be nice and easy and convenient and happy and not strictured with legality or jealousy. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Madalyn Murray O'Hair Famous Quotes And Sayings

Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

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

We wish our Christian brothers would be honest and permit us our heroes. We do not deny them theirs. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I want a strong man, but a gentle one. And, most unlikely of all, but most essential, I want a man with a capacity for love - to give it generously and accept it joyously. I also want somebody who, when I say, "Let's call it quits," won't hang on; who'll say, "All right, it was fun while it lasted. So long and good luck." — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

In his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, the most definitive study that's ever been done on the subject, Albert Schweitzer admitted that there isn't a shred of conclusive proof that Christ ever lived, let alone was the son of God. He concludes that one must therefore accept both on faith. I reject both for the same reason. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I'd describe myself as a sexual libertarian - but I'm not a libertine. "To each his own" is my motto. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Ill tell you, Mr. Thomas, why some Christians are afraid of me. They're not sure that what they believe is really true. If they were sure, I wouldn't be a threat to them at all. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Legality can't create love if it isn't there, or preserve it if it's dying, but it can destroy love by making it compulsory. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I want a big man physically as well as intellectually. l want a man with the thigh muscles to give me a good frolic in the sack, the kind who'll tear hell out of a thick steak, and yet who can go to the ballet with me and discuss Hegelian dialectic and know what the hell he's talking about. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

It doesn't seem to occur to men that woman might be a worthwhile end in herself, or to see to it that she has a proper sexual release. And, to him, sex appeal is directly proportional to the immensity of a woman's tits. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Do you know anybody who's come back with a firsthand report on heaven? If you do, let me know. Until then, you'll pardon me if I don't buy it. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

We were just floored by the kindness of the people here. The minister of the Unitarian Church in Honolulu invited my family over to his office the day we arrived and told us to make it our headquarters while we looked for a permanent residence. When we couldn't find a place for about a week, he let us live in the church; that's ironic, isn't it? But it points up the vastly different intellectual atmosphere that prevails here in Hawaii. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The neighborhood children, of course, were forbidden by their parents to play with my little boy, Garth, so I finally got him a little kitten to play with. A couple of weeks later we found it on the porch with its neck wrung. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I just can't see either a man or a woman in a dependency position, because from this sort of relationship flows a feeling of superiority on one side and inferiority on the other, and that's a form of slow poison. As I see it, men wouldn't want somebody inferior to them unless they felt inadequate themselves. They're intimidated by a mature woman. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Pope John XXIII was an amoeba of goodness in a sea of waste, mistakenly believing that the Holy See could or would really change in any fundamental way.He was a tragic figure, for he raised a false hope, cast a brief ray of light that was snuffed out when he died. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I've found that most people who are bound together legally would be a damn sight happier together -or apart -if they were released from the contract. A man-woman relationship is physical and emotional, not legal. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

It would be impossible to calculate the psychic damage concepts of sin has inflicted on generations of children who might have grown up into healthy, happy. productive, zestful human beings but for the burden of antisexual fear and guilt ingrained in them by the Church. This alone is enough to condemn religion. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Let nature decide. When a cow is biologically ready to have sex relations, she mates with the nearest well-hung bull. When a flower is ready to scatter its seed, it pollinates. It's the same way throughout nature - except with man, who tries to postpone consummation of his sex drive, unsuccessfully for the most part, for six or eight years after he reaches puberty. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. It's no coincidence that most of my abusive mail - sentencing me to exquisite Oriental tortures and relegating me to hell-fire and damnation -comes from self-admitted Catholics. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Late one night our house was attacked with stones and bricks by five or six young Christians, and my father got very upset and frightened. Well, the next day he dropped dead of a heart attack. The community knew very well that he had a heart condition, so I lay a murder to the city of Baltimore. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised. One of these is eating. Nobody's going to license me to do this. Another one is bodily disposals. I will defecate and urinate when I damn well please and as the spirit -and the physical necessity -moves me. And my sex life is peculiarly my own. I will engage in sexual activity with a consenting male any time and any place I damn well please. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

We packed up all the worldly possessions we could carry with us and took the next flight to Hawaii from Washington. It took just about every cent my family had to our name just to pay the plane fare. When we arrived, we had about $15 left among us. We were really in pitiful shape. But we were together, and we were alive, and this was all that mattered. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Sex is where you find it. I say take it and enjoy it. Give and receive freely, without fear, without guilt and without contractual obligations. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I just want a man -a real, two-balled masculine guy -and there aren't many of them around, believe me. But I do want somebody my own age, and somebody who has brains enough to keep me interested and to earn enough money to support me in the style to which I've become accustomed. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. . . . He is beyond human forgiveness. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I can't deny that I was an intellectual prostitute along the way many, many times in college. I can remember one examination where they said. "Describe the Devil," and in order to get 12 points on that question one had to say that the Devil was red and had a forked tail and cloven hoofs and fangs and horns on his head. So I merrily wrote this answer down and got my 12 points. I always got straight hundreds in Bible study. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I'm not saying that all American men are this way, but nine out of ten are breast-fixated, wham-bam-thank-you-rna'am cretins who just don't give a damn about anyone's gratification but their own. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

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

I was shamed.My son, Bill, who was 14 come to me and said: "Mother, you've been professing that you're an atheist for a long time now. Well, I don't believe in God either, but every day in school I'm forced to say prayers, and I feel like a hypocrite. Why should I be compelled to betray my beliefs?" I couldn't answer him. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

On a nationwide basis, I would guess that the various churches would have to pay annually an amount at least equal to the national debt. But it's impossible for me to make an exact estimate, because the churches hide their wealth in every way they can - deliberate falsification as to the value of property, registering it under phony names in order to obscure the fact that the Church owns the property. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Scholars have found that references to Christ in Josephus were deliberately planted in the translation long after it was written, and the Latin references to Christ are not to a person of that name. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there was mention of a particular "teacher of righteousness" who had characteristics somewhat like those attributed to Christ, but it might easily have been someone else. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I'm not proud of having been married -I've had five affairs, all of them real wingdings. I've enjoyed every goddamned minute of them, but sooner or later I've outgrown every one of them, and when I did I got fed up and threw them out. If they can't keep up with me, the hell with them. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

My son Bill, who came to me in 1960-he was 14 then, quoted the old parable to me: "It is not by their words, but by their deeds that ye shall know them" -pointing out that if I was a true atheist, I would not permit the public schools of America to force him to read the Bible and say prayers against his will. He was right. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Those so-called records in the Bible were written by devout ecclesiasts who wanted to believe, and wanted others to believe, in the coming of a Messiah. Until someone proves otherwise, therefore, these stories must be considered nothing more than folk tales consisting in equal parts of legend and wish fulfillment. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If you're talking about intellectual and social equality for women, we're not much better off.America is still very much a male-dominated society. Most American men feel threatened sexually unless they're taller than the female, more intellectual, better educated, better paid and higher placed statuswise in the business world. They've got to be the authority, the final word. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Let's distinguish between freedom and equality. The modern American woman may be more liberated sexually than her mother was, but I don't think she enjoys a bit more sexual equality. The American male continues to use her sexually for one thing: a means to the end of his own ejaculation. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I'm saying that there's absolutely no conclusive evidence that Jesus ever really existed, even as a mortal. I don't believe he was a historical figure at all. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Engineers have a very limited education and background, I think you need to move into the broader humanities in order to become a total person. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

As a matter of fact. I think I actually frighten men. I think I scare the hell out of them time after time. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I decided that if nobody else was going to do anything to rectify this colossal inequity in taxation, I'd have to do it myself. So I instituted a suit against the city of Baltimore demanding that the city assessor be specifically ordered to assess the Church for its vast property holdings in the city, and that the city tax collector then be instructed to collect the taxes once the assessment has been made. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

When I started going to church, my first memories are of the minister getting up and accusing us of being full of sin, though he didn't say why; then they would pass the collection plate, and I got it in my mind that this had to do with purification of the soul, that we were being invited to buy expiation from our sins. So I gave it all up. It was too nonsensical. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

As I grew a little bit older and got interested in law, I read that Clarence Darrow didn't believe in the Bible either. So I read everything he had ever written, all of his trials, everything - to search out the philosophy of his disbelief.But I couldn't find it. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I hate to disappoint my haters, but I'm not the least bit interested in being a man. I'm perfectly satisfied with the female role. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Let's face it: If a son of God was ever born, it was because of this wonderful sex act that Joseph and Mary enjoyed one night. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I recall that I had a terrible struggle finding anything antireligious in the school libraries.But many years later my family moved into a house where a woman had left a box of books containing 20 volumes on the history of the Inquisition. I found out there was a word for people like me: "heretic." I was kind of delighted to find I had an identity. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If a humanist or an atheist or an agnostic says, "We'll bake you a pie," we can go right into the kitchen and bake it, and you can eat it an hour later. We don't promise you a pie in the sky by and by. It's charlatanry to promise people something that no one can be sure will ever be delivered. But it's even worse to offer people a reward, like children, for being good, and to threaten them with punishment if they're not. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I need somebody who can at least stand up to me and slug it out, toe to toe. I don't mean a physical battle. I mean a man who would lay me, and when he was done, I'd say: "Oh, brother, I've been laid." Or if we had an argument, he would stand up and engage in intellectual combat and not go off and mope in the corner, or take reprisals, or go to drink. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Even if I believed there was a real Jesus, I wouldn't fall for that line of hogwash. The "Virgin" Mary should get a posthumous medal for telling the biggest goddamn lie that was ever told. Anybody who believes that will believe that the moon is made out of green cheese. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I'd been a psychiatric social worker for 17 years, but within 24 hours after I started the case against studying reading Bible in school by my son, I was fired from my job as a supervisor in the city public welfare department. And I was unable to find another one. So my income was completely cut off. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

By the time it's considered socially acceptable to start screwing, most of us are sexually constipated, and this is often an incurable condition. I think young people should be able to have their first sexual love affair whenever they feel like it. In the case of most girls, this would be around 13 or 14; with most boys, around 15 or 16. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I was about 12 or 13 years old. I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend ,just as if it were a novel, very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I was overwhelmed by the number of calls we got from people offering to rent us houses, to take us out to dinner, to drive us around house hunting. Everyone was just indescribably kind in Havaii. Finally we moved into a house offered to us for an incredible $125 a month by a man who feels that the separation of church and state is a valid constitutional issue which should be fought for. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I want somebody, a men, who's whole and wholesome and has as much zest for living as I have. But I haven't found one who fills the bill; you can't hardly find them kind no more. And I know many women my size, psychologically and intellectually, who have the same problem. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

That would be the frontispiece. This was a picture of my mother and me coming out of the United States Supreme Court, with fecal matter smeared across our faces. They wrapped it in wax paper so that when I received it I'd get the full impact of the message. Though I haven't gotten anything quite that original lately, there's still never a dull moment in my mailbox. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. I don't feel that I can sit in judgment on them, or that society can sit in judgment on them. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

As a militant feminist, I believe in complete equality with men: intellectual, professional, economic, social and sexual; they're all equally essential, and they're all equally lacking in American society today. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it. There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I don't think anybody should be celibate - and that goes for priests as well as nuns. I don't even like to alter a cat. We should all live life to the fullest, and sex is a part of life. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view - which is what, along with my reason, entitles me to refute it. You can't rationally reject something until you know all about it. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

At no time have I ever said that people should be stripped of their right to the insanity of belief in God. If they want to practice this kind of irrationality, that's their business. It won't get them anywhere; it certainly won't make them happier or more compassionate human beings; but if they want to chew that particular cud. they're welcome to it. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Male say they're looking for a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad, but what they really want, and usually get, is an empty-headed little chick who's very young and very physical -and very submissive. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

You don't need a marriage license to live with someone, to have the security of a home, to rear any number of children, to have years of companionship; it's not illegal, but the moment you want to screw somebody, you have to get a license from the state to use your genital organs -or run the risk of being charged with any number of crimes carrying sentences up to and including death. So sex is really the only sensible reason for getting married. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

If any one age could be singled out as the worst in the history of Christendom, it would be the administration of Pope Pius XII, the most reactionary head of the most reactionary single force in the world - a force that binds men's minds, a force that divides them, a force that chains them so that they are unable to think and act for themselves. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I want to drink life to the dregs, to enlarge myself to the absolute limits of my being - and to strive for a society in which everyone -regardless of race, creed, color and especially religious conviction - has the same exhilarating raison d'être, and the same opportunity to fulfill it. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Life Lessons by Madalyn Murray O'Hair

1. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American activist who fought for the separation of church and state, and the right to freedom of religion. Her work serves as a reminder to stand up for what you believe in and to fight for your rights.
2. O'Hair was an advocate for civil rights and was a strong voice for the voiceless. Her work serves as an example of how one person can make a difference and how important it is to speak out against injustice.
3. O'Hair was an inspirational figure who showed that it is possible to make a change and that one person can make a difference. Her work serves as an example of how to stand up for what you believe in and to fight for the rights of others.