Ronald Knox Quotes

#1. Always tell the truth, and people will never believe you.

Ronald Knox

#2. O God, for as much as without Thee We are not enabled to doubt Thee, Help us all by Thy grace To convince the whole race It knows nothing whatever about Thee.

Ronald Knox

#3. The study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious.

Ronald Knox

#4. Dogmas may fly out at the window but congregations do not come in at the door.

Ronald Knox

#5. If a man tells you that he is fond of the Imitation, view him with sudden suspicion; he is either a dabbler or a Saint.

Ronald Knox

#6. It is so stupid of modern civilisation to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.

Ronald Knox

#7. He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.

Ronald Knox

#8. You must believe, sooner or later, in a Mind which brought mind into existence out of matter, unless you are going to sit down before the hopeless metaphysical contradiction of saying that matter somehow managed to develop itself into mind.

Ronald Knox

#9. The hall-mark of American humour is its pose of illiteracy.

Ronald Knox

#10. The great argument used now against any theological proposition is not, that it is untrue, or unthinkable, or unedifying, or unscriptural, or unorthodox, but simply, that the modern mind cannot accept it.

Ronald Knox

#11. A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.

Ronald Knox

#12. It is possible to argue that the true business of faith is not to produce emotional conviction in us, but to teach us to do without it.

Ronald Knox

#13. It appears, then, that the two processes are going on side by side, the decline of Church membership and the decline of dogma; the evacuation of the pew and the jettisoning of cargo from the pulpit.

Ronald Knox

#14. Only those of us, I think, who were born under Queen Victoria know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if the worst comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat.

Ronald Knox

#15. If you have a sloppy religion you get a sloppy atheism.

Ronald Knox

#16. A baby is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Ronald Knox

#17. Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny.

Ronald Knox

#18. The motor-car, in brining us all closer together, by making it easy to have luncheon two counties away, has driven us all further apart, by making it unnecessary for us to know the people in the next bungalow. And so, once again, we have to thank civilization for nothing.

Ronald Knox

#19. It doesn't do to say that heresy produces the development of doctrine, because that annoys the theologians. But it is true to say that as a matter of history the development of doctrine has been largely a reaction on the Church's part to the attacks of heresy.

Ronald Knox

#20. But in disclaiming the dead, you are yourself disclaimed by the dead. If you are not prepared to blush for Alexander the Sixth, it is childishly inconsistent to take pride in the memory of Saint Francis.

Ronald Knox

#21. The prevailing attitude of the speakers was one of heavy disagreement with a number of things which the reader had not said.

Ronald Knox

#22. Can anything matter, unless there is Somebody who minds?

Ronald Knox

#23. Long before I had ever seen a ritualistic service I became a Ritualist.

Ronald Knox

#24. Order is the cipher by which Mind speaks to mind in the midst of chaos.

Ronald Knox

#25. A rush age cannot be a reflective age.

Ronald Knox

#26. When suave politeness, tempering bigot zeal, corrected 'I believe' to 'one does feel'.

Ronald Knox