Jon Carroll Quotes

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do.

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.

There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, - no doubt we are, - but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.

There are some famous people, and I've met them, who you might think are great, and then you meet them, and you discover that they not only have feet but heads of clay.

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.

They talk like angels but they live like men.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

Good and bad men are less than they seem.

Men are not necessarily more zealous for truth than they are for error.

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

Whoever believes that Aristotle was a god, must also believe that he never erred. But if one believes that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to error just as we are.

Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

The people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them

I wonder if it is wise for any of us to read anyone's writings too consistently? No matter how able they may be, they seem occasionally to find it difficult to be consistent, and this tends to give me as a reader the feeling that we are all of us swayed by so much by our momentary impulses and interests, that what we write at any time can not be taken too seriously.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about...Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings, who don't have all the answers, to think that they do.

It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.

There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.

Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it.

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Man has always been dexterous at confusing evil with good. That was Adam's and Eve's problem, and it is our problem today. If evil were not made to appear attractive, there would be no such thing as temptation.

Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race.

Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down. You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation.

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

Many people believe everything others say, even though what they see with their own eyes, should be enough to tell them otherwise.

Creation has the truth written all over it - the age of the universe, the history of the world - but nine-tenths of mankind either don't know it or think it's a sham, because it isn't what their book or their prophet says, and it isn't cozy or manipulable enough.