Customer Reviews

The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Non-Believers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book was fun to read and full of interesting insights. I've already read it twice and even underlined favorite quotes. The quotations collected in this book are in fact short arguments in favor of the atheistic perspective, so reading them is an easy way to absorb a great number of pertinent points. I would highly recommend this as companion reading for anyone who has read and appreciated The God Delusion, Letter To A Christian Nation, or God Is Not Great. It fills in many of the cracks by providing more historical background and a wider range of arguments for atheism and freethought.

This Jack Huberman is spot-on funny and right-on about the dangers our nation faces in the onslaught of the bullying idiocy of followers of the christian right currently running amock in our streets, on our airwaves, and in our minds ( if we let them ). There are TONS of great free-thinking skeptic types listed and quoted in this great little book, all of whom are given witty introductions by the author/editor guy Jack.

This is an enjoyable and entertaining collection of quotes that are presented in a light-hearted manner (although some of the quotes themselves are no so light-hearted). It's an ecletic mix with some laugh-aloud quotes nestling alongside more sombre comments.
It's certainly a useful book to have around to solve arguments as to the religious nature of some of historical figures.

Put into print what I've been thinking for the past 55+ years. Religion has never made sense to me. Apparently I'm not alone.

I really enjoyed this book. My friends and family started getting annoyed with me, because every five minutes I would read them another quote. However there is not much context to the quotes. Also a great deal of the quotes have more to do with the problems of Christianity as a religion as opposed to the belief in God. This book is meant to be fun, not the ultimate argument on why God does not exist, and in that it succeeds (at least for a hardcore fellow atheist). The strongest characteristic of the book may be the guidance and foundation it establishes for its readers to find other strong freethinkers to read. I know my reading list just grew 10 fold.

The Quotable Atheist is a good book, and by far the best collection of quotes that I have come across so far. Unfortunately, much of the credibility of the book is compromised by the author's frequent unnecessary interjections, which come across very much as an unwanted accomplice shouting encouragements from the background, which mostly boil down to "yeah, in your FACE!"

Here is an example from a quote from Peter A. Angeles: "'...Why did He suddenly desire to create the universe?' (He got hungry and needed someplace to order a pizza from?)" Ka-pow! Whackity-schmackity doo! Take THAT, theists!

In the context of an otherwise thought-provoking book, Huberman's comedic punch-up often comes across as intellectually underwhelming and juvenile. While his enthusiasm is appreciated, quote after quote seems to lose credibility after being debased with his unnecessary rhetoric. At any moment, I expected to read the words, "ohh, you got OWNED!" following one of the well-worded quotations.

Lowbrow yuk-yuks aside, the book is a veritable treasure trove of quotes dating from the present to well before the time of Jesus Christ. It is an interesting and unique perspective on atheism throughout history, and definitely has a place in the collections of anyone who has ever faltered away from religious faith.

I am giving this book five stars for two reasons. First of all, it is fun, entertaining, educational, and inspiring. It is truly reassuring to know that so many people, far smarter than myself, feel the same way I do about religious ignorance and hypocrisy. Secondly, I feel the need to balance out the one star review given by the ignorant fanatic who probably never read the book. I figure a war of words on amazon.com is a whole lot nicer than another Inquisition.

I am an atheist, but this is just bad. For example, it attributes a quote to John Adams that was really said by James Madison ("Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?"). When a books whole purpose is to provide quotes, it becomes a less than useless book when it can't even get the authors of the quotes correct. Further, it does not provide the source for any of the quotes. When providing a quote, it should say where the quote came from and what year. You won't get that with this book. There was a quote attributed to George Washington that seemed questionable. I tried to hunt down a source on the internet and couldn't find it anywhere. The source should have been in the book, but in this case the quote might not even be legitimate. Avoid this book if you want to get your facts straight.

I've enjoyed reading it in the bathroom. Lots of very interesting quotes, but quality is not uniform. The author likes to make wisecracks about those he is quoting -- when these work, they can be funny, but often they are slightly annoying. It's a pleasure to see what some famous people have said in this area.

If you find some "atheism" books dull because they repeat the same old arguments, you'll probably find some new and provocative gems here. Glad I got this in addition to the "classics".

It is not hard to rate this book highly because one is really rating some of the pithy comments made by many great minds down the ages. Especially in this age of unreason that seems to have hit the world and the USA in particular, such hard-hitting truths are needed. But most of all, I like this book because when I first picked it up it made me chuckle and I kept doing that through many quotes. Enjoyable.