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Israel Zangwill (1864-1926)
British playwright, novelist

Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan -- spoiled.
-- Israel Zangwill, Sons of the Ghetto, bk. 2, ch. 6 (1892)

Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.
-- Israel Zangwill, quoted from Floyd College, Rome, Georgia, "Banned Books -- Quotes"

Frank Zappa
Composer, musician

     • Check our Big List of Frank Zappa Quotations and Lyrics

Tax the FUCK out of the churches!
-- Frank Zappa (attributed: source unknown)

Yeah, I tell them to change the channel if they see some guy in a brown suit with a telephone number at the bottom of the screen asking for money.
-- Frank Zappa, Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock", 1985, after being asked by Tipper Gore if there was anything on TV he didn't allow his kids to watch

The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. "You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that."
-- Frank Zappa

Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion?
-- Frank Zappa, to a concert audience at the Rockpile, Toronto, May 1969

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.
-- Frank Zappa, quoted from Cyber Nation's quotations section

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
-- Frank Zappa, promotional postcard from Rykodisc

The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn't, then blow it out your ass. I do it to amuse myself. If I like it, I release it. If somebody else likes it, that's a bonus.
-- Frank Zappa, interview, Playboy, May 2, 1993

Zeno of Citium (ca. 335-263 BCE)
Greek philosopher who founded the Stoic school

No matter whether you claim a slave by purchase or capture, the title is bad. They who claim to own their fellow-men, look down into the pit and forget the justice that should rule the world.
-- Zeno of Citium, quoted by Robert Green Ingersoll in "Why I Am an Agnostic"

Frank R Zindler
Former professor of biology, geology; science writer; editor, American Atheists Magazine

Real scientists are required to play by the rules without exception. Creationists follow the rules of science only so long as it is expedient. Then they resort to miracles. But resorting to miracles is not offering an explanation: it is asserting that no real explanation exists. Whenever creationists resort to miracles, they are admitting that their system cannot account for the facts of nature; it cannot explain the world.
-- Frank R Zindler, "Reversing Science," his "The Probing Mind" column for April, 1990

The First Amendment of the US Constitution ... is an eloquent repudiation of the First Commandment's prohibition of religious freedom. It is also a repudiation of the Third Commandment's prohibition of freedom of speech. The Thirteenth Amendment repudiates the institution of slavery which is so cozily assumed by the Fourth and Tenth Protestant Commandments.
-- Frank R Zindler, "Hang 'Em All -- Completely!"

Consider: what could be more American than the principle that every person is to be held accountable for his or her crimes only? Could anything be more un-American than the Second Commandment's warning that "I Yahweh, thy God, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."? Not even the Common Law would have hung a man because his grandfather had stolen a horse!
-- Frank R Zindler, "Hang 'Em All -- Completely!"

Émile Zola (1840-1902)
French writer and critic who was a leading proponent of naturalism in fiction

Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.
-- Émile Zola, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest!
-- Émile Zola, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Carl Zollman

There is no country in which not only religious liberty in general, but the property of religious bodies in particular, is as secure as it is in the United States.
-- Carl Zollman, American Church Law, 1933, p. 10, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Every individual has by nature the inherent, inalienable and indefeasible right of worshipping and serving God in the mode most consistent with the dictates of his conscience; that none shall be deprived of this right; that no human authority shall in any case interfere with or in any manner control or infringe it; and that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious faith, worship, belief, sentiment, and profession shall forever be allowed, secured, protected, guaranteed, and held sacred. It follows that every person is at liberty to profess and by argument to maintain his opinion in matters of religion; that every denomination is to be equally protected by suitable laws in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship; that none will be subordinated to any other or receive any peculiar privileges or advantages -- in short, that no preference will be given to nor discrimination made against any religious establishment, church, sect, creed, society or denomination or any form of religious faith or worship or system of ecclesiastical policy. Absolute freedom to choose such religious belief as his judgment and conscience may approve has thus become the birthright of American citizenship. Any civil or political rights, privileges, capacities, or positions which a person may have or hold will not be diminished or enlarged or in any other manner affected by his religious faith, nor will he be disqualified from the performance of his public or private duties on account thereof. He will not, on account of his religious opinion, persuasion, profession, and sentiments or the peculiar mode or manner of his religious worship, be hurt, molested, disturbed, restrained, burdened, or made to suffer in his person or property.
-- Carl Zollman, American Church Law, 1933, p. 10. This is a classic definition of religious liberty as it has developed in the American experience. Quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Gary Zukav
American spiritual teacher

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion; rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.
-- Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

The Subtle Fulmination of the Encircled Sea

Please Feel Free
to Grab a Quote
(or Maybe Three)

Grab some quotes to embellish your web site,
to use as filler for your group's newsletter,
or to add force to your Letters to the Editor.

Use them to introduce the chapters of a book or
accent the index or margins of a special project.

Poster your wall!    Graffiti your (own) fence.
Sticker your car!!
Poster your wall.    Graffiti your (own) fence!!!

That's what this list is for!
That's why I made it!

In using this resource, however, keep in mind that
it's someone's life's work, a hedge against old age.

If you decide to build your own online
collection, then find some new material!
Dig up quips that haven't yet been posted!

There's something to be said
for doing your own work.