Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason.

I'm a rationalist and a skeptic, someone who safely separates faith from reason.

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.

I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.

I do not believe in Belief.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.

When a man is required to believe certain doctrines, he is not free to think. A creed is to keep the mind from inquiry. Questions lead to doubt, and doubt is the death of faith.

As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.

I don't believe anything till I have seen the proof. For anything without proof, I think we should believe the theory that gives us peace. It doesn't matter whether the theory is true or not.

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.

And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime.

I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief.

I think maybe it is better to believe than not to believe. But I couldn't tell you why.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.