Top 100 Quotes About Agnosticism
#1. I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism.
Brad Pitt
#3. ... our generation hasn't made any meaningful contribution to the field. We have promoted atheism, displayed agnosticism (which amounts to an ambiguous shoulder shrug), or, in most cases, been eerily silent.
Gudjon Bergmann
#4. For agnosticism is, in a sense, what I am preaching. I do not wish to reduce the sceptical element in your minds. I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.
C.S. Lewis
#5. What the world needs today is a definite, spiritual mobilization of the nations who believe in God against this tide of Red agnosticism ... And in rejecting an atheistic other world, I am confident that the Almighty God will be with us.
Herbert Hoover
#6. I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.
Orson Welles
#7. In our day many people are broad but shallow. Agnosticism, anxiety, and emptiness have gripped much of our world.
Billy Graham
#8. Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual.
Thomas Huxley
#9. Agnosticism has nothing to impart. Its sermons are the exhortations of one who convinces you he stands on nothing and urges you to stand there too.
Anna Julia Cooper
#10. He had remained steadfast in agnosticism and therefore, as Mabel took comfort in remarking, 'he never denied God.' Neither did he affirm God.
Robert V. Bruce
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. My religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism.
Alfred Tennyson
#14. Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
Thomas Huxley
#15. Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.
H.L. Mencken
#16. Skepticism is my nature. Free Thought is my methodology. Agnosticism is my conclusion. Atheism is my opinion. Humanitarianism is my motivation.
Jerry DeWitt
#17. I may have had a prejudice against agnosticism as a body of thought: sort of a fence-sitting theory, where you can't make up your mind one way or another.
S.T. Joshi
#18. I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know ... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.
B.F. Skinner
#19. Because of the confusion surrounding the term "agnosticism," it would seem better to use the very similar term "rationalism" in its place when referring to the original Huxleyan meaning of the term. The use of "rationalist" for "agnostic" would also seem to be less ambiguous.
Gordon Stein
#20. Most people don't even try to learn the ways of the kingdom; they just go about their days with a practical agnosticism, hoping things work out, tossing up prayers like they hope to score on a Jesus lottery ticket.
John Eldredge
#21. You go back to T. H. Huxley, who coined the term, what he said - and I came to believe he is right - is that agnosticism asserts not only that he himself didn't know if there was a God or not, but that nobody could know.
S.T. Joshi
#22. 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
#23. Organized religion is no longer good news for most people, but bad news indeed. It set us up for the massive atheism, agnosticism, hedonism, and secularism we now see in almost all formerly Christian countries.
Richard Rohr
#24. 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
#25. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton Wilson
#26. Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism.
Friedrich Engels
#27. 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
#28. All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
#29. I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.
Clarence Darrow
#30. The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism, and other burning issues by burning the ismist, which is fine proof that there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God.
Ben Lindsey
#31. It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church going, hollow-hearted prosperity.5
Francis Chan
#32. The claim to know that no god exists is just irrational. The non-existence of any god has no evidence, let alone proof. To know something for certain there must be proof. To hold to a belief there must be evidence. Until
then, the only actual reasonable position is agnosticism.
Lewis N. Roe
#33. When students of other sciences ask us what is now currently believed about the origin of species, we have no clear answer to give. Faith has given way to agnosticism. Meanwhile, though our faith in evolution stands unshaken we have no acceptable account of the origin of species.
William Bateson
#34. The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.
A.A. Milne
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. America's freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, offers every wisdom tradition an opportunity to address our soul-deep needs: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism among others.
Parker Palmer
#38. 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
#39. Agnosticism is the natural attitude of the evolutionist. How can a brute mind comprehend spiritual things?
William Jennings Bryan
#40. We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.
Nicolas Roeg
#41. All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
H.L. Mencken
#42. Are there any religions on your list that include the slaughter of noblemen as a holy duty?
Brandon Sanderson
#43. I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subject of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am.
Tony Horwitz
#44. Cop-out excuses and catch-phrase dismissals can only work so long before the holes in the religious argument cannot be ignored any longer.
Steve Dustcircle
#45. I wish I had the gift of religious faith. Sometimes I long to believe in a structured universe designed purposefully for mankind.
Adib Khan
#46. Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong
James Branch Cabell
#47. You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do ... and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.
Criss Jami
#48. I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.
Clarence Darrow
#49. A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.
Peter L. Berger
#50. Intellect, at its best, can make you agnostic. Being theist or atheist is still a matter of choice.
Raheel Farooq
#51. Science is agnostic when it comes to God - not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly - just agnostic.
Eric Chaisson
#52. To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
Thomas Aquinas
#53. Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.
Sam Harris
#54. [T]he present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original[.]
Ludwig Feuerbach
#55. We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.
Andy Rooney
#56. We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.
Sam Harris
#58. We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.
Sam Harris
#59. Belief in God meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah; and I would not pretend I did not know whether it existed or not.
George Bernard Shaw
#60. To say that atheism is not a religion is the equivalent of saying anarchy is not really a political creed
Bo Jinn
#61. I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist ... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate.
Alejandro Amenabar
#62. And the cause of everything is that which we call God.
Leo Tolstoy
#63. There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.
Criss Jami
#65. You don't have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is "I don't know".
Penn Jillette
#66. One could say that my view legitimately fuses the end-time messianic expectations of all three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity!
Eli Of Kittim
#68. Beliefs divide us; values unite us." Godless - Living a Valuable Life beyond Beliefs.
Jeff Rasley
#69. In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not ...
Bill Gates
#70. If the gods exist, then it does not matter whether or not this is something that one knows.
Alex Stein
#72. The intellectual support for UNBELIEF is about as stable as the stock market.
John Eldredge
#73. Life loves to reveal herself to the raw, courageous doubters; to those who are willing to live inside the question.
Jacob Nordby
#74. As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.
Diogenes Laertius
#75. What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.
Sam Harris
#76. If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.
Mark Twain
#77. No man will say, "There is no God" 'till he is so hardened in sin that it has
become his interest that there should be none to call him to account.
Matthew Henry
#78. In response to a letter regarding the writer's lack of religious belief:
The lack of faith is not doubt. It is certainty.
Abigail Van Buren
#79. I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.
Andy Rooney
#80. Blessed be the merciless, for they shall see God's enormous shrug.
George Garrett
#81. The idea of God was invented in the small hours of history by a scam who had genius; it somehow reeks too much of humanity, that idea, to make its azure origin plausible ...
Vladimir Nabokov
#82. For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements and we get organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.
Sean S. Kamali
#83. The question concerning Jesus: do you want to know the real story, or just the allegory?
Eli Of Kittim
#84. When he kneels at other times and prays or meditates or tries to achieve a Big-Picture spiritual understanding of God as he can understand Him, he feels Nothing - not nothing, but Nothing, an edgeless blankness that somehow feels worse than the sort of unconsidered atheism he Came In with.
David Foster Wallace
#85. Education levels are highly and negatively correlated to religious belief. In other words, ignorance is bliss.
Cesar Nascimento
#86. There is yet another reason why I cannot, nor wish to, believe in God: the fairy tale about him is not really mine, it belongs to strangers, to all men; it is soaked through by the evil-smelling effluvia of millions of other souls that have spun about a little under the sun and then burst ...
Vladimir Nabokov
#87. The Bible has noble poetry in it ... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
Mark Twain
#88. We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc.
Julian Huxley
#89. When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.
Sam Harris
#90. Whether you say that a god does exist, or that none do, it is a claim
to know (or at least believe in) something. Once you claim to know
something, you can't call that a lack of belief in the opposite view
and then say it's the place that you started.
Lewis N. Roe
#91. I am, perhaps, too intellectual, too modern, for my own comfort! How lovely it would be to sink into the warm comfort of established religion.
Lisa Tuttle
#92. I think if I were to sit down in a bid for power, I would ask myself what I should control if I want to control the people. The answer would be sex. Money. And definitive knowledge of the afterlife. Then I'd make fantastically pleasant rules surrounding every one of them.
Dan Pearce
#93. Interviewer: Didn't Sagan want to believe?
Druyan: he didn't want to believe. he wanted to know.
Ann Druyan
#95. Robert Ingersoll came to [a small Midwest town] to speak ... , and after he had gone the question of the divinity of Christ for months occupied the minds of the citizens.
Sherwood Anderson
#96. The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.
Sam Harris
#97. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#98. I don't know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic.
Stephanie Perkins
#99. Every agnostic has a minister, Mike. Otherwise, they's be atheists.
Jared C. Wilson
#100. The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.
Criss Jami
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
