Jonathan Kozol Quotes

I'm a firm believer and I think my religion is inside.

Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality.

It's important to ask candidates about their beliefs, in part because politicians frequently exploit religious faith - often with the idea that voters will be more likely to unthinkingly accept certain political positions so long as they arise from religious belief.

If we don't have God in our life, we're considered dead.

My dad believes in God, I think. I'm not sure if my mom does. I don't.

I have great trouble with the people who envision AIDS as a punishment from God.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

Religion triggers a lot of emotions in me, most of which stem from being raised Jewish in a very Baptist community in the South. I didn't believe any of it from an early age - the clubby quality of whatever religion or church you belonged to, Judaism included. It just struck me as foolish.

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.

Why do people get upset when Christians say there is only one way to Heaven? Shouldn't those who follow a particular religion believe its doctrine to be true?

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.

I'll be honest with you: politically, I have no issue with people, but my beef sometimes is with religion at the end of the day.

My father hates organized religion, probably because he hates the God who killed his little girl back in 1968. I find religions variously bemusing.

I'm a writer of faith who worries about the intolerance of religion. I look at the past and fear we haven't learned from it. I believe that humanity is capable of evil as well as great acts of courage and goodness. I have hope. Deep down, I believe in the human spirit, although sometimes that belief is shaken.

Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world.

I went through a lot of phases and studied many religions. I am not into religion, I am spiritual.

I've always been very vocal about my religion. It's a big part of who I am.

I am a child of God.

I fear it's because religion is man's attempt to reach God, and when he feels he has succeeded, he cannot abide anyone else's claim to have done the same.

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

So the history of discovery, particularly cosmic discovery, but discovery in general, scientific discovery, is one where at any given moment, there's a frontier. And there tends to be an urge for people, especially religious people, to assert that across that boundary, into the unknown, lies the handiwork of God. This shows up a lot.

One should never tie his faith to how old the earth is.

If I don't talk about my religion, if I say I'm not discussing it or different humanitarian things I'm working on, they're like, 'He's avoiding it.' If I do talk about it, it becomes, 'Oh, he's proselytizing.'

For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.