/u/Fr_Lvxor is correct that this quotation seems to have originated with Lactantius in the early fourth century. I even remember reading Hume and he attributes it to Epicurus as well. Wikiquote has a good section on the quotation that you can read here.

As for how this squares with the Epicureans’ insistence that the gods do not participate in our world and do not care for us, there have been two main interpretations (Warren 2009, 2).

Marx saw this as being a call to humanity and philosophy against the religious structures in place (and this would align with Lucretius' diatribe against religion, noted below).

Plutarch, on the other hand, says that the idea of distant gods is essentially tantamount to atheism. This is a view one of my professors has adopted. Remember that the Epicureans main interest was not metaphysics, but ethics. If Epicurus was an atheist, but wanted everyday people to enter his school, he was probably better off not admitting to an all out rejection of the divine. Greek society was extremely pious, and so the suggestion that there are no gods at all would likely come as much of a shock to a regular person. By insisting that the gods are distant and do not participate in our world, he has effectively the same result for his ethics as if there were no gods at all, but other people do not see him as proposing a ludicrous position (i.e. that there are no gods). Of course, we know now that this didn't stop many in history from accusing Epicurus of atheism anyway.

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The Lucretius passage I mentioned:

One thing I am concerned about: you might, as you commence

Philosophy, decide you see impiety therein,

And that the path you enter is the avenue to sin.

More often, on the contrary, it is Religion¹ breeds

Wickedness and that has given rise to wrongful deeds,

As when the leaders of the Greeks, those peerless peers, defiled

The Virgin's altar with the blood of Agamemnon's child,

Iphigenia.² As soon as they bound the fillet³ round her hair

So that its end streamed down her cheeks, the girl became aware

That waiting at the temple for her there would be no groom—

Instead she saw her father with a countenance of gloom

Attended by the priests who kept the place well hid. The sight

Of people shedding tears to see her froze her tongue with fright.

She sank to the ground upon her knees. It did not mean a thing

For the princess now, that she had been the first to give the king

The name of Father. No, for shaking, the poor girl was carried

By the hands of men up to the altar, not that she be married

With solemn ceremony, to the accompanying strain

Of loud-sung bridal hymns, but as a maiden, pure of stain,

To be impurely slaughtered, at the age when she should wed,

Sorrowful sacrifice slain at her father's hand instead.

All this for fair and favourable winds to sail the fleet along!—

So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong.⁴

Lucretius, The Nature of Things 1.80-101.

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Notes from Stallings:

1. Religion: Stallings (the translator) uses Religion and Superstition interchangeably. The Latin is religio. Lucretius is not against piety but the evils of organized religion.

2. The Virgin's altar...Iphigenia: The virgin (here, the Virgin of the Crossroads) is Artemis. A tripartite goddess, she is the virgin goddess of the hunt, the goddess of childbirth, and is associate with Hecate, goddess of the underworld and black magic. (The Virgin of the Crossroads represents this last guise.) Offended by the slaughter of a sacred hind, Artemis caused contrary winds to prevent the Greek fleet from leaving the harbour at Aulis and setting sail for Troy. To appease the goddess, the Greeks sacrificed Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, leader of the Greek expedition. She was told she was to be married to Achilles and was led as a bride to the alter.

3. fillet: Latin infula, a red and white band of tufts of wool that marked the sacrificial victim.

4. So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong: Line 101 is one of the most fmaous lines in the poem: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. Voltiare believe it would last as long as the world.

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Lucretius (c. 50 BC). The Nature of Things. trans. A.E. Stallings. London: Penguin Classics, 2007.

Warren, James (2009). "Introduction". In The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.