Hello Jessica

Firstly you could try this web site.

Or here are some quotes from famous though not necessarily recent Atheists and agnostics.
 

The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. - Abraham Lincoln

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. - Albert Einstein

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him. - Arthur C. Clarke

I used to think it was terrible that life was so unfair. Then I thought 'wouldn't it be much worse if life really were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us occur because we actually deserve it. - Marcus (Babylon 5)

At the age of eighteen ... I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question 'Who made God?'. This led me to abandon the 'First Cause' argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject. - Bertrand Russell

Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature. - Carl Sagan

For myself, I do not believe in any revelation. - Charles Darwin

The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether - Daniel C. Dennett

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? - Douglas Adams

All thinking men are atheists. - Ernest Hemingway

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. - Frank Lloyd Wright

I still went to church regularly, though, until I was eighteen years old. Then suddenly, the light bulb went on over my head. All the mindless mobidity and discipline was pretty sick - bleeding this, painful that and no meat on Friday. What is this shit? - Frank Zappa

They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with. - Gene Roddenberry (Creator of StarTrek)

It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief. - George Bernard Shaw

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. - Giordano Bruno (1548)

Praying is like a rocking chair-- it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere. - Gypsy Rose Lee

Here's what happens when you die--you sit in a box and get eaten by worms. I guarantee you that nothing cool happens when you die. - Howard Stern

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. - Isaac Asimov

To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women. - James Randi

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you will join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you will join us
And the world will live as one - John Lennon

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless. - Leo Tolstoy

YOUR PETITIONERS ARE ATHEISTS and they define their life-style as follows. An Atheist loves himself and his fellowman instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue, and enjoy it. An Atheist thinks that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellowman can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellowman rather than to know a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be build instead of a church An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end to troubles in the hereafter. He knows that we are our brother's keeper and keepers of our lives; that we are responsibile persons, that the job is here and the time is now. - Madalyn Murray O'Hair

[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. - Mark Twain

The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe may not perceive and love the sentient. The universe sees no distinction between the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it. All are equal. None is favored. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars. - Michael Moorcock

So you're a god, eh? Very nice, very nice. But, you still don't have a reservation... - Monty Python

Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same. - Napoleon Bonaparte

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. - Oscar Wilde

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself. - Peter O'Toole (The Ruling Class)

And it's not just faith itself: it's the idea that faith is a virtue and the less evidence there is, the more virtuous it is. You can actually quote, well, Tertullian for example: "It is certain because it is impossible." Sir Thomas Brown, actually seeking for more difficult things to believe, because things for which there is mere evidence are just too easy, and it's no test of his faith. In order to have a test of your faith, you must be asked to believe really daft things like the transubstantiation, you know, the blood of Christ turning into wine, and stuff... That is so manifestly absurd that you've got to be a really great believer, in the class of the Electric Monk, in order to believe it..... You're actually showing off your believing credentials by the ability to believe something like that... If it were an easy thing to believe, substantiated by facts, then it wouldn't be any great achievement. - Richard Dawkins

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here... I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me. - Richard Feynman

A believer is a bird in a cage. A freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. - Robert G. Ingersoll

God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. [...]and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. [...] From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person. - Salman Rushdie

Do you not observe that it [religion] is an ineradicable and innate defect of our and every other civilization, that it imposes on children, who are driven by instinct and weak in intellect, the making of decisions which only the mature intelligence of adults can vindicate? - Sigmund Freud

Driving through a Swiss city one day, Hitchcock suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." His companion was surprised to see nothing more alarming than a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the child's shoulder. "Run, little boy," cried Hitchcock, leaning out of the car. "Run for your life!" - Sir Alfred Hitchcock

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none. - Sir Charles 'Charlie' Chaplin

The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty. - Stephen Hawking

Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise? - Stephen Jay Gould

The man hates superstition
But he believes in God
I think that's inconsistent
I think that's really odd
When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way - Stevie Wonder

Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that? - Taslima Nasrin

Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion. - The school Superintendant from the Simpsons

Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder - Homer Simpson

Marge, have you ever actually sat down and read this thing? Technically, we're not even allowed to go to the bathroom. - The Priest from the Simpsons

So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk. - Thomas Edison

I mean if you can believe in the Christian religion you can believe in anything, you know it's so utterly preposterous. - Tom Baker (Doctor Who)

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life -- the power to create. - Vincent van Gogh

Prayers never bring anything... They may bring solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the aboriginal, and the lazy - but to the enlightened it is the same as asking Santa Claus to bring you something for Xmas - W.C.Fields

To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. - Woody Allen

Sorry it's a bit long

Russell