Clarence Darrow Quotes

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.

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

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.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

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.

Most atheists bristle at the thought that atheism has anything to do with faith, but not Penn Jillette.

No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.

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

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

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.

Nobody really knows if there's a God - not Oprah, not Joel Osteen, not the Pope. Nobody has touched or felt or conversed with God. They say they have, but let's get real. I think that is what keeps me from coming out as an atheist. I think to myself, even the atheists don't know that there isn't a God. Nobody knows anything.

I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.

I think maybe it is better to believe than not to believe. But I couldn't tell you why.

Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

The only people I've met in this world who never doubt are materialists and atheists.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

I am an agnostic as to the question of God.

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

People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, “Well, are you a Republican or an American?” The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, “I don't have a knowledge that God exists.” The atheist says, “I don't have a belief that God exists.” You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.

I can't be sure God does not exist. On a scale of seven, where one means I know he exists, and seven I know he doesn't, I call myself a six. That doesn't mean I'm absolutely confident, that I absolutely know, because I don't.

We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.

I wouldn't like to be a non-believer in anything.