Steve Allen Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

One social evil for which the New Testament is clearly in part responsible is anti-Semitism.

Steve Allen
Millions of Germans had absolute faith in Hitler. Millions of Russians had faith in Stalin. Millions of Chinese had faith in Mao. Billions have had faith in imaginary gods.

Steve Allen
I cannot see how it can be argued that one should speak in tones of reverence and awe about the alleged divine instruction-in Psalms-to grab the defenseless bodies of innocent infants and dash their brains out against the nearest rocks or walls.

Steve Allen
There are few pages of history which do not demonstrate that public prayer and ritual never inoculated people against mass-madness and cruelty. What is needed is emphasis on morality and manners.

Steve Allen
If there is a God, the phrase that must disgust him is - holy war.

Steve Allen
The fundamentalist believer is mostly a weird intellectual who often lacks real faith altogether. As a self-appointed attorney for God, who is in no need of attorneys, he very easily turns out to be more godless than the agnostic and the unbeliever. At all events, he seems deaf to poetry.

Steve Allen
Thousands of years ago only Christ could walk on the water. Today anybody can do it; you just step on the garbage.

Steve Allen
The Bible is unfortunately unclear on a long list of moral and social questions and sex is one of them. On the one hand, there are expressions of admiration for the reportedly virgin mother of Jesus, but other portions of scripture speak quite accommodatingly of polygamy.

Steve Allen
The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy - and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational

Steve Allen
We are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.

Steve Allen
I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed.

Steve Allen
In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.

Steve Allen
If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

Steve Allen
It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty.

Steve Allen
Without laughter, life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter that societies highly reward those who make a living by inducing laughter in others.

Steve Allen
Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.

Steve Allen
Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion.

Steve Allen
This is The Tonight Show. I can't tell you too much about it, other than the fact that this program is going to go on forever.

Steve Allen
One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.

Steve Allen
To those who wish to punish others— or at least to see them punished, if the avengers are too cowardly to take matters in to their own hands— the belief in a fiery, hideous hell appears to be a great source of comfort.

Steve Allen
The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.

Steve Allen
God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope.

Steve Allen
Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.

Steve Allen
There is not the slightest question but that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous, vengeful God, inflicting not only on the sinful pagans but even on his Chosen People fire, lighting, hideous plagues and diseases, brimstone, and other curses.

Steve Allen
There are hundreds of millions who believe the Messiah has come. If he did, then it is unfortunately the case that his heroic sacrifice and death have had no effect whatsoever on the very problem his coming might have been expected to address, for history demonstrates, beyond question, that we Christians have been just as dangerous, singly and en masse, as non-Christians.

Steve Allen
Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations.

Steve Allen
Get this to Grand Central Station as quick as you can!

Steve Allen
Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.

Steve Allen
No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.

Steve Allen