Agnosticism Quotes - Page 5

• Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Christian, Atheist, Atheism

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• I do believe in God, but I think it's very healthy for a believer to spend time in the pragmatism of agnosticism, and I think God appreciates agnostics trying to make a science of it and going, "I will not believe any further than that." I enjoy that kind of engineering mind. In no way did it ever feel blasphemous to me as a man of faith.

  Matthew McConaughey

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  "Q&A: True Detective's Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, the Laurel and Hardy of Existential Despair". Interview with John Lopez, grantland.com. January 8, 2014.

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• Agnosticism is the natural attitude of the evolutionist. How can a brute mind comprehend spiritual things?

  William Jennings Bryan

  Spiritual, Attitude, Mind

  William Jennings Bryan, Lowell Harris Coate (1925). “The dawn of humanity”

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• The negative way [of describing God] is a cardboard prop of Christianity to conceal its unknowable God. When this prop collapses, theistic agnosticism emerges, complete with its package of contradictions and non-sensical utterances.

  George H. Smith

  Negative, Utterance, Way

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• The heart must be kept tender and pliable; otherwise agnosticism converts to skepticism. In such a case, the value of apologetics is voided, for apologetics is aimed at persuading doubters, not at refuting the defiant. He who demands a kind of proof that the nature of the case renders impossible, is determined that no possible evidence shall convince him.

  Edward John Carnell

  Heart, Demand, Doubters

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• For a time it seemed inevitable that the surging tide of agnosticism and materialism would sweep all before it. There were those who did not dare utter what they thought. Many thought the case hopeless and the cause of religion lost once and for ever. But the tide has turned and to the rescue has come - what? The study of comparative religions. By the study of different religions we find that in essence they are one.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Essence, Different, Tides

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• In one of his last appearances, Mitterrand, the agnostic president, was asked what the real God might say to him if he went to heaven. God would say: "At last, you know." And I would hope that He would add, "Welcome."

  Francois Mitterrand

  Real, Heaven, President

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• Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.

  Francis Thompson

  Everlasting

  "A Renegade Poet and Other Essays" by Francis Thompson, Boston: The Ball Publishing Co., (p. 47), 1910.

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• Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. ... Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

  Thomas Huxley

  Lying, Essence, Principles

  Thomas Henry Huxley (19??). “Aphorisms of Thomas Huxley”

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• To say that we cannot know anything about God is to say something about God; it is to say that if there is a God, he is unknowable. But in that case, he is not entirely unknowable, for the agnostic certainly thinks that we can know one thing about him: That nothing else can be known about him.

  J. Budziszewski

  Thinking, If There Is A God, Agnostic

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• Agnosticism is epistemologically self-contradictory on its own assumptions because its claim to make no assertion about ultimate reality rests upon a most comprehensive assertion about ultimate reality.

  Cornelius Van Til

  Reality, Self, Atheism

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• The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Children, Years, Religion

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• It is the best book ever written on the subject. There is nothing like it!

  Thomas A. Edison

  Book, Religion, Atheism

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• "Cynicism," like "heresy" and "heterodoxy" and "atheism" and "agnosticism" and "paganism" and "heathenism," is above all else a way for organized orthodoxy's caste of official censors to encyst and segregate and thus neutralize all contrarian forms of seeing and thinking, all (necessarily implicitly) prohibited and repressed ways of exercising disruptive and iconoclastic intuition and intellection (for to analyze and explain these things too openly is to give them publicity and potential cogency when the point is to asphyxiate them).

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Exercise, Thinking

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• We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.

  Nicolas Roeg

  Belief

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• I just became a stronger agnostic, and then I started to realize that everyone who was saying they were agnostic really hadn't thought about it that much. Still, I went with agnosticism for a long, long time because I just hated to say I was an atheist -- being an atheist seemed so rigid. But the more I became comfortable with the word, and the more I read, it started to stick.

  Julia Sweeney

  Atheist, Long, Stronger

  "FINDING MY RELIGION / Julia Sweeney talks about how she became an atheist" by David Ian Miller, www.sfgate.com. August 15, 2005.

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• There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

  E. M. Forster

  Lying, Suffering, Atheism

  E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

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• Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.

  Andre Gide

  Littles, Triumph, Belief

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.34, Routledge

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• From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Spiritual, Buddhist, Philosophy

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Essentials of Hinduism”, p.23, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

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• An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Agnostic, There Is No God

  "A Tribute to Carl Sagan: The Sagan File" by Joel Achenbach, The Skeptic Magazine, Vol 13, No. 1, www.skeptic.com. 2006.

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• Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Skins, Doctrine, Christian Doctrine

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “Lectures to young men, on various important subjects”, p.307

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• Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Intellectual, Atheism, Weakness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1828). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think”, p.76

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• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, May, Belief

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.11, Vintage

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• I believe in the gods; or rather I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us; I believe they are completely absent minded.

  Jean Giraudoux

  Believe, Brooding, Absent

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• Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

  Jonathan Swift

  Nurse, Miracle, Age

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1843). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.304

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