Thomas Paine Quotes

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..." They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..." They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..." But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe.

...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

I think of the Bible as an unauthorized biography.

All religions are, in some basic sense, irrational.

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""

He that believes all misseth; he that believes nothing, hits not.

Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.

The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it. I love the parts I love so much, but I find a lot of it just appalling. When a right-wing person quotes a passage in order to attack and stigmatize another person--or group of people--I just roll my eyes.

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.

Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith.

I do not believe in Belief.

Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.

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

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

Why understand when you can believe?

None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much.

Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,(...) the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble. (Tyrion)

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

When a scientist says he believes the Bible--that doesnt give me anymore more faith in the Bible that gives me more faith in the scientist.

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.