Sargent Shriver Quotes

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

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.

People would rather believe than know.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

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.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

It is easier to believe than to doubt.

I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can't present it as fact.

I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

He who knows nothing, doubts nothing.

He doubts nothing who knows nothing.

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

'Belief' means something that you do not know. You want to assume and bring a certainty to something that you do not know. That means you are concretising your ignorance. There is no need to believe anything.

If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.

I do not believe in Belief.

To the medieval mind the possibility of doubt did not exist.

Faith can move mountains; true: mountains of stupidity.

It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)

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.