A. J. Jacobs Quotes

If I were stranded on a desert island, the one book I would have with me would is the Bible. There are enough stories in the Bible to keep you engaged for years.

Let the Bible be the Bible. It's not about science. It's not accurate history. It is a grab bag of religious fantasies written by many authors. Some of its myths, like the Star of Bethlehem, are very beautiful. Others are dull and ugly. Some express lofty ideals, such as the parables of Jesus. Others are morally disgusting.

It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.

Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture.

I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective.

The Bible, for all its riches, is not a document of social history.

The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it.

This is the Book. I have read the Bible through many times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year. It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct. It fits man for life--it prepares him for death.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.

When I was a teenager, I read the bible cover-to-cover, and I found the Old Testament, it's a pretty bloody history book.

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.

The Bible defines almost nothing because it isn't a book for scholars and philosophers or free thinkers. It's a book for people who want help. It's primarily a book for pastors. They're the ones that can use it in a way so that it actually achieves its purpose.

The Bible writers didn't care that they were bunching together sequences some of which were historical, some preposterous, and some downright manipulative. Faithful recording was not their business; faith was.

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow - man.

The Bible is a wonderful book; you can prove anything you want with it.

I wondered what I would do if I didn't have my God to turn to and be able to read the Book He had divinely inspired.

The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book they wish to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice!

For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.

I read the bible often, not just to prepare for "Noah". I believe it is a very important book.

Hannibal Lecter: We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.

It is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth -- whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from wha.

However often we turn to it [the Koran] at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence. . . . Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible - ever and anon truly sublime - Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.