George Eliot Quotes

It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.

I think some people who say they're not Christians can behave in a more godly fashion than people who call themselves Christians.

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

I've always felt like there are certain politicians that wear their religion on their sleeve in a way that you almost feel is disingenuous. I think that your faith has to be first personal. I struggle with those people that preach something and go back behind closed doors and live differently.

As far as critics, I'm not a hip guy. I was never on drugs. Nobody ever felt sorry for me 'cause I went straight or found God. I always had God. I've always like, played by the rules.

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.

It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity.

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks a little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.

If God came to save the world, why are so many of His professed followers intent on damning it?

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

If thou beest ever so exact in thy morals, and not a worshiper of God, then thou art an atheist.

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.

A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!

If you have a sloppy religion you get a sloppy atheism.

The god of the world's leading religion.

Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.

It is hypocrisy for man to make any other use of his religion, or the credit of it, than to sanctify and save his soul.

Hypocrisy is fatal to religion.

No man's religion ever survives his morals.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'Tis for no other cause but quietness sake.

Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.

Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent men.