Agnostic Quotes - Page 15

• I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism

  Dan Savage

  Atheism, Cop, Principled

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• When it comes to God's existence, I'm not an atheist and I'm not agnostic. I'm an acrostic. The whole thing puzzles me.

  George Carlin

  Funny, God, Atheist

  George Carlin (2004). “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?”, Hyperion

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• Within the mystery of life there is the infinite darkness of the night sky lit by distant orbs of fire, the cobbled skin of an orange that releases its fragrance to our touch, the unfathomable depths of the eyes of our lover. No creation story, no religious system can fully describe or explain this richness and depth. Mystery is so every-present that no one can know for certain what will happen one hour from now. “ It does not matter whether you have religion or are an agnostic believe in nothing, You can only appreciate (without knowing or understanding) the mysteries of life.

  Jack Kornfield

  Religious, Believe, Eye

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• The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Dream, Ignorance, Light

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• As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering hisfellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Taken, Despair, Principles

  Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.143, Courier Dover Publications

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• The average businessman began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way out.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Average, Way, Forget

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• People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)

  Douglas Adams

  Atheist, Thinking, Hair

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.103, Del Rey

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• I think I'm a love agnostic - not sure, one way or another, if it really exists.

  Joan M. Drury

  Thinking, Way, Not Sure

  Joan M. Drury (1996). “Silent Words”, Spinsters Ink Books

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• ...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Christian, War, Night

  W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.226, Random House

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• The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty- four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves....Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it.

  Philipp Melanchthon

  Honesty, Moving, Eye

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• Without the intervention of the civil authority what would our percepts become?- Platonic laws.

  Philipp Melanchthon

  Law, Authority, Platonic

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• The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably not true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Heart, Thinking, Acting

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• The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Horse, Cat, Gay

  "Clinical Notes". The American Mercury (January 1924), p. 75; later quoted in H. L. Mencken "Prejudices: Fourth Series", 1924.

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• There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Jesus, Believe

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.120, Knopf

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• Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.

  H. L. Mencken

  Heaven, Tickets, Clergymen

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• I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.

  H. L. Mencken

  Detest

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• The man or country that fights priestcraft and priests is to my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be struck anywhere.

  George Meredith

  Country, Fighting, Men

  George Meredith, William Maxse Meredith (1912). “1844-1881”

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• Let me use their own terminology against them. They aborted a child in the 200th trimester.

  Dennis Miller

  Children, Use, Let Me

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• Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ignorance, Miracle, Arise

  Michel de Montaigne (1956). “Autobiography: Comprising the Life of the Wisest Man of His Times ...”

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• So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history.

  Sun Myung Moon

  Lying, Sin, Good Things

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• You never hear in the news, "200 killed today when Atheist rebels took heavy shelling from the Agnostic stronghold in the north."

  Doug Stanhope

  Atheist, Two, Rebel

  "Doug Stanhope: Word of Mouth". Comedy, 2002.

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• Yes, I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as atheist some people will say, Don't you mean agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one...etc., etc. It's easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal and that it's an opinion I hold seriously.

  Douglas Adams

  Being Yourself, Atheist, Believe

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• Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief.

  Romain Rolland

  Running, Religious, Atheist

  "Life of Ramakrishna". Book by Romain Rolland, 1928.

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• I never graduated to being an atheist. I only graduated to being an agnostic.

  Christopher Durang

  Atheist

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• After all, we scientific workers ... like women, are the victims of fashion: at one time we wear dissociated ions, at another electrons; and we are always loth to don rational clothing; some fixed belief we must have manufactured for us: we are high or low church, of this or that degree of nonconformity, according to the school in which we are brought up-but the agnostic is always rare of us and of late years the critic has been taboo.

  Henry Edward Armstrong

  Fashion, School, Science

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