A. Whitney Brown Quotes

The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?'

I do not value religion chiefly for its morality.

Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, and why.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen

Religions are, for the most part, bad. But religion is not.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

The standard of what offends 'the common conscience of the community' conflicts ... with the command of the First Amendment. ... Certainly that standard would not be an acceptable one if religion, economics, politics or philosophy were involved. How does it become a constitutional standard when literature treating with sex is concerned? Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to 'sexual impurity' or has a tendency to 'excite lustful thoughts.' This is community censorship in one of its worst forms...

I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.

Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.

I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, raid, and learn from.

An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.

Science is the natural ally of religion.

Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

Try to live as if there were a God

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

The ultimate question of who we are is set before us at all times and answered with every action.

The Gay Science, section 108

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

Religion is just coded spirituality.

I look upon Phrenology as the guide to philosophy and the handmaid of Christianity. Whoever disseminates true Phrenology is a public benefactor.

Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel?

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.