George Santayana Quotes

[Faith] is nothing more than wishful thinking, and the wish is no evidence of anything beyond itself. Yet so many religious people take their wishes for reality.

The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof, and the worshiping heart needs none.

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Faith: a firm belief for which there is no evidence.

To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.

I do not understand how a man can be a true believer, in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble.

Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.

The real truth, I thought, in terms of what faith is and what Christianity is.

Christians are like a thirteen year old kid who still believes in Santa.

If a religious person says "No, no, no" and they won't listen to science, it makes me think that they don't have faith in their own religion.

I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental - in fact I wanted faith.

I'm often asked what I think about the faith of the President George W. Bush. I think it is sincere. I think it's very real. I think it's deeply held.

Religion, you can't a handle on it, you just have to know or not know-people either believe or they don't believe.

I'm a God-fearing man.

I can't believe in Christianity, but I think Jesus was a wonderful teacher.

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 was real religious when I was young. I wanted to be a missionary.

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.

You can’t be a rational person six days a week and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you are drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god. That doesn’t make you a person of faith…, that makes you a schizophrenic.

We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.

We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God.

The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

One of my professors said to me once, "Any god that can be killed off will be killed, but if I can shake up your faith in your god, it means you already don't have much of a god."

I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen... go wrong