Agnosticism Quotes - Page 3

• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Believe, Religion

  "What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (p. 139), September 1930.

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• I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Ideas, Religion

  Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997.

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• As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

  Francis Collins

  Life, God, Atheist

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• God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, and the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; he will set them above their betters.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ego, Sanctuary, Arms

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• I am afraid I shall not find him, but I shall still look for him, for if he exists, he may be appreciative of my efforts.

  Jules Renard

  Effort, Looks, May

  Jules Renard (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.186, Tin House Books

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• The unbelief of the age is attested by the loud condemnation of trifles.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Age, Loud, Condemnation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.73, Penguin

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• I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

  Charles Darwin

  God, Garden, Thinking

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• Genuine blasphemy, genuine in spirit and not purely verbal, is the product of partial belief, and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.

  T. S. Eliot

  Christian, Atheist, Perfect

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• Those who talk of the bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity.

  T. S. Eliot

  Christianity, Graves, Admiring

  1935 Religion and Literature.

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• I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.

  Sigmund Freud

  Believe, Blessed, Thinking

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey (1953). “The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud”

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• An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason's ability to know the truth, which alone satisfies the human heart's restless quest for meaning.

  Pope John Paul II

  God, Heart, Doubt

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• I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.

  David Hume

  Believe, Enough, There Is No God

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• I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

  Sigmund Freud

  Thinking, Atheism, Experience

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.

  Alvin Plantinga

  Stars, Thinking, Numbers

  "Is Atheism Irrational?". Interview with Gary Gutting, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. February 9, 2014.

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• All bibles are man-made.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Bible, Men, Religion

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• Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.

  Bede Griffiths

  Atheist, Rejection, Challenges

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• God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Atheism, World, Emptiness

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.183, Vintage

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• Say first, of god above or man below; what can we reason but from what we know.

  Alexander Pope

  Men, Firsts, Reason

  Alexander Pope (1847). “The works of Alexander Pope, with notes and illustrations, by himself and others. To which are added, a new life of the author [&c.] by W. Roscoe”, p.24

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• I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Religious, Atheist

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.11, Broadway Books

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• I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower from, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Law, Mind

  Charles Darwin (1883). “The Descent of Man and Seletion in Relation to Sex”, p.613, Рипол Классик

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• You ask people, do you pray to [a person or] God. If you say yes to that, you're religious by, presumably, anybody's standards of your conduct. And it's the yes to that question that applies to 40% of scientists. So, there're plenty of atheists who are scientists or not scientists. There maybe a conflict but many people in this country coexist in both worlds.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Country, Religious, Atheist

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• For the first time in the history of the world, Buddhism proclaimed a salvation which each individual could gain from him or herself, in this world, during this life, without any least reference to God, or to gods either great or small.

  Aldous Huxley

  Buddhism, Atheism, World

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• Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Religious, Prayer

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.32, Princeton University Press

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• A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that he created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws.

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, Self, Law

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.417

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• Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Saint, Body

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.349, Рипол Классик

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