Francis Collins Quotes

I guess I don't believe that death is the end.

Why do people embrace God? In my opinion, belief in God and an afterlife is a necessary extension of man's need to feel that this life does not end with what we call death.

I don't believe in any particular definition of the afterlife, but I do believe we're spiritual creatures and more than our biology and that energy cannot be destroyed, but can change. I don't know what the afterlife is going to be, but I'm not afraid of it.

The afterlife is whatever a soul wishes or believes it to be.

I think the Resurrection continues to be a pivotal issue, a pivotal question for people. I think a lot of other issues have been raised in interim years, about the nature of truth, of course gender issues, issues involving social matters like abortion and euthanasia and so forth, those swirl about and change from time to time, but I think the fundamental question of whether or not Christianity is true ultimately goes back to the Resurrection.

God and the afterlife and all that is certainly a subject that's interested me, and I think it interests me more the older that I get.

Certainly the Old Testament does not teach us that there is another life, and upon that question even the New is obscure and vague. The hunger of the heart finds only a few small and scattered crumbs. There is nothing definite, solid, and satisfying. United with the idea of immortality we find the absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy that depends for its fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy the brain or heart.

The reason we have this inner conviction that death is not the end - and that Heaven exists - is because we were created in the image of God.

For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.

The most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most, the probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body.

Whatever it is that occurs at death, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don't die. The cessation of the body is an illusion, and like a magician sweeping aside a curtain, the soul reveals what lies beyond.

Death is the Graduation of the Soul

As I go into a cemetery I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves. ... Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown!

Morality is similar to religion - it is a somniferous drug which blinds people from seeing the squalor of their lives.

And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what's after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it's a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can't believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.

O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!

Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.

Was his death an essential stage in the continuation of his life?

Death is just where your suit falls off and now you're in your other suit. You can't see it on this level, but it's all right. Don't worry.

Where do you go when you die? The same place you were before you were born; nowhere! It's over!

For though Death be a dark passage, it leads to immortality, and that is recompence enough for suffering of it.

The world of the dead wonʹt give you up a second time.

What is our death but a night's sleep? For as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the powers of the spirit come back again, so that in the morning we arise fresh and strong and joyous; so at the Last Day we shall rise again as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong.

I think we'd all like to believe that after we shuffle off this mortal coil, that there's going to be something on the other side because for most of us, I know for me, life is so rich, so colorful and sensual and full of good things, things to read, things to eat, things to watch, places to go, new experiences, that I don't want to think that you just go to darkness.

I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.