I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.
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Speaking to the Law Society of Upper Canada, (21 February 1936); published in Canadian Occasions (1940), p. 201.
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Buchan's source for this definition remains unknown. The witticism was repeated by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his On Being a Real Person (1943), ch. 1, with due acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955). The credit for this line is therefore often wrongly given to Fosdick or to Sheen. Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950).
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This is a play on words commonly used to define a vagrant or bum as having "no visible means of support" financially.John Buchan
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
Fulton J. Sheen
The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights.
Philip Jose Farmer
I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
Isaac Asimov
The war on terror as defined by President Bush is a one-dimensional presentation of reality. We cannot fight terrorism by military means alone. We can use military force only when we have a known target; but it is the habit of terrorists to keep their whereabouts hidden. To track them down we need the support of the populations amongst whom they hide. Offense is not necessarily the best defense if it offends those whose allegiance we need.
George Soros
I do support direct action. I do not advocate or support violence.… Elections are not a viable means of ensuring democratic change in Russia. Therefore I do support using other methods to push for a change back towards democracy
Boris Berezovsky
Buchan, John
Buchanan, James
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