William Cowper Brann Quotes

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy, and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

He who departs from consensus is not an infidel.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.

We are all missionaries (propagandists of our views). Each of us disapproves of the other missionaries.

Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Religion deals in certainties and philosophy deals more in un-answered questions.

A quest for knowledge is not a war with faith; spirituality is not usually an infelicitous amalgam of superstition and philistinism; and moral relativism, taken outside midfield, leads inexorably both to heresy and to secular wickedness, which are often identical.

God save us from religion.

It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.

There is nothing as potentially polarizing as religion.

The Sword and its law have existed from the beginning of the world. The use of force can never prevent heresy.

It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

There would never have been an infidel had there never been a priest.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

When a man is required to believe certain doctrines, he is not free to think. A creed is to keep the mind from inquiry. Questions lead to doubt, and doubt is the death of faith.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels

You'll never get me to speak religion. You'll never get me to speak politics.

Scientology is completely irrelevant to any of the talks that have been given to me.

The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.