Agnosticism Quotes - Page 6

• The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Agnostic, Ecstatic, Knows

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.89, Vintage

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• I have always considered "Pascal's Wager" a questionable bet to place. Any God worth "believing in" would surely prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Atheist, Believe, Hypocrite

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• Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

  Anatole France

  Inspirational, Acceptance, Risk

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• Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

  Bill Gates

  Inspirational, Morning, Atheist

  Bill Gates, Janet Lowe (1998). “Bill Gates Speaks: Insight from the World's Greatest Entrepreneur”, p.220, John Wiley & Sons

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• Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Atheist, Cat, Dark

  Robert A. Heinlein (1985). “Job, a Comedy of Justice”, Del Rey

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• We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Law, Theory Of Evolution

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution”, p.21, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.

  Denis Diderot

  Blow, Light, Darkness

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

  Thomas A. Edison

  Atheist, If There Is A God, Fake

  "What on Earth is an Atheist!". Book by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, 1972.

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• The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening.

  Pat Robertson

  Christian, Atheist, Government

  TV Series "The 700 Club", www.imdb.com. (1966- ).

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• As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.

  Protagoras

  Mean, Knowing, Religion

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• For such is man: a Theological Dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times - provided however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as true. Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will. Fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Intellectual, Atheism

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• There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Truth, Educational, Atheism

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• We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reality, Sublime, Atheism

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• And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

  David Hume

  Determination, Believe, Giving

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding "Of Miracles" (1748)

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• The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life.

  Sigmund Freud

  Life, Men, Atheism

  Sigmund Freud (1930). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, p.1, Courier Dover Publications

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• ... superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness. Chased from the open country, these robbers fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices. ... The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

  David Hume

  Wise, Country, Religious

  David Hume (1779). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.10

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• As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.

  Charles Darwin

  Life, Men, Judging

  The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Religion (p. 277)

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• Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress.

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, Men, Long

  Charles Darwin (2003). “On the Origin of Species”, p.433, Broadview Press

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• I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  God, Nature, Believe

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• With the strength of his spiritual sight and insight the distance, and as it were the space, around man continually expands: his world grows deeper, ever new stars, ever new images and enigmas come into view.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Spiritual, Stars, Distance

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1973). “Beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future”, Penguin Classics

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• The transition from Religion to Scientific contemplation is a violent, dangerous leap, which is not to be recommended. In order to make this transition, art is far rather to be employed to relieve the mind overburdened with emotions. Out of the illogical comes much good. It is so firmly rooted in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and generally in everything which gives value to life. It is only the naive people who can believe that the nature of man can be changed into a purely logical one. We have yet to learn that others can suffer, and this can never be completely learned.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Believe, Passion

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• Writer Somerset Maugham, after his parents deaths, spent a few stultifying years in his uncle's vicarage. Later, in his teens at a boarding-school, having lost his belief in the existence of God said: "The whole horrible structure, based not on the love of God, but on the fear of hell, tumbled down like a house of cards."

  Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon

  Uncles, School, House Of Cards

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• One reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution; Darwin's own drift from orthodoxy to agnosticism was symptomatic. Martin Lings is probably right in saying that more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution ... than to anything else.

  Huston Smith

  Religious, Teaching, Loss

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• Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance.

  Harun Yahya

  Ignorance, Years, People

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• ..when, in my philosophical disquisitions, I deny a providence and a future state, I undermine not the foundations of society, but advance principles, which they themselves, upon their own topics, if they argue consistently, must allow to be solid and satisfactory.

  David Hume

  Philosophical, Atheism, Foundation

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.358

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