Charles Eliot Norton Quotes

You go back to T. H. Huxley, who coined the term, what he said - and I came to believe he is right - is that agnosticism asserts not only that he himself didn't know if there was a God or not, but that nobody could know.

I will never come around to the idea of an anthropomorphic God. I'm also uncomfortable with the word 'God'... I'm agnostic about the answer and I'm agnostic about the question.

I find myself by default an atheist but fairly unhappily so. It would be bloody marvelous if there was a god.

I don't know whether God exists or not. ... Some forms of atheism are arrogant and ignorant and should be rejected, but agnosticism—to admit that we don't know and to search—is all right. ... When I look at what I call the gift of life, I feel a gratitude which is in tune with some religious ideas of God. However, the moment I even speak of it, I am embarrassed that I may do something wrong to God in talking about God.

I'm probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don't think anyone really knows. You'll either find out or not when you get there, until then there's no point thinking about it.

There is no god, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

To a certain extent I am taking a leap of faith. I'm adding up the evidence on either side, and I'm seeing the evidence of there not being a God is overwhelming compared to the evidence for there being a God.

I'm an agnosto-theist.

I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism.

I think there will always be a possibility that God doesn't exist because He is infinitude and into that infinitude must come that possibility.

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

God is Man's greatest invention

I believe there's a God but I'm not too sure of his relevance.

I don't see any sign of God in this world, in the place where we live and things we know. It can all be explained to my mind perfectly satisfactorily without God. But in the great darkness beyond this little spark of light where I live, of course there may be all kinds of things. There may be a god. So I'm really an agnostic.

The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.

No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

Question boldly even the existence of God.

Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists.

We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed.

If God were alive today, He'd be an atheist.

I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.

I am not religious in the dogmatic sense... I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything.

I don't say that I don't believe in God because that implies that there is a God for me not to believe in.

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.