Agnostic Quotes

“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.”
― Isaac Asimov

“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”
― Bertrand Russell

“If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."

(Notebooks)”
― Voltaire

“A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.  Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”
― Roger Zelazny, Creatures of Light and Darkness

“Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song? ”
― James Frey

“I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it... I'm not agnostic. Just nonpartisan. Theological Switzerland, that's me.”
― Jim Butcher, Death Masks

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”
― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“A belief is not true because it is useful”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.”
― Clarence Darrow

“I leave pansies, the symbolic flower of freethought, in memory of the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, who stood for equality, education, progress, free ideas and free lives, against the superstition and bigotry of religious dogma. We need men like him today more than ever. His writing still inspires us and challenges the 'better angels' of our nature, when people open their hearts and minds to his simple, honest humanity. Thank goodness he was here.”
― Bruce Springsteen

“I have always considered myself as an Agnostic...”
― Alexander Graham Bell, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude

“If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.”
― Mark Twain

“All religions are man-made; God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“The real difference is this: the Christian says that he has knowledge; the Agnostic admits that he has none; and yet the Christian accuses the Agnostic of arrogance, and asks him how he has the impudence to admit the limitations of his mind. To the Agnostic every fact is a torch, and by this light, and this light only, he walks.

The Agnostic knows that the testimony of man is not sufficient to establish what is known as the miraculous. We would not believe to-day the testimony of millions to the effect that the dead had been raised. The church itself would be the first to attack such testimony. If we cannot believe those whom we know, why should we believe witnesses who have been dead thousands of years, and about whom we know nothing?

The Agnostic takes the ground that human experience is the basis of morality. Consequently, it is of no importance who wrote the gospels, or who vouched or vouches for the genuineness of the miracles. In his scheme of life these things are utterly unimportant. He is satisfied that “the miraculous” is the impossible. He knows that the witnesses were wholly incapable of examining the questions involved, that credulity had possession of their minds, that 'the miraculous' was expected, that it was their daily food.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol 1: Lectures

“Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Obviously, if theism is a belief in a God and atheism is a lack of a belief in a God, no third position or middle ground is possible. A person can either believe or not believe in a God. Therefore, our previous definition of atheism has made an impossibility out of the common usage of agnosticism to mean 'neither affirming nor denying a belief in God.' Actually, this is no great loss, because the dictionary definition of agnostic is still again different from Huxley’s definition. The literal meaning of agnostic is one who holds that some aspect of reality is unknowable. Therefore, an agnostic is not simply someone who suspends judgment on an issue, but rather one who suspends judgment because he feels that the subject is unknowable and therefore no judgment can be made. It is possible, therefore, for someone not to believe in a God (as Huxley did not) and yet still suspend judgment (ie, be an agnostic) about whether it is possible to obtain knowledge of a God. Such a person would be an atheistic agnostic. It is also possible to believe in the existence of a force behind the universe, but to hold (as did Herbert Spencer) that any knowledge of that force was unobtainable. Such a person would be a theistic agnostic.”
― Gordon Stein

“We are ultimately unknowable to ourselves and others. Our past and future are mostly unknowable. God is unknowable. For the present the universe - its origins and its destiny - is unknowable, as is whether there are many universes. Infinity is unknowable. These are some of the fundamental reasons why I call myself an agnostic.”
― Michael Krasny, Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest

“For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements and we get organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.”
― Sean S Kamali

“Dear friend, life passes with or without God.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Chicken with Plums

“The Agnostic is one who asserts 'what no one denies' that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence.”
― Leslie Stephen

“I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith.”
― Robert M. Price

“Sonnet 1609

Myself Human,
Himalayan Human -
broader than your schools,
higher than your walls.

Myself Sapiens,
Serendipitous Sapiens -
holier than hagiographies,
stranger than quantum world.

Be a Muslim, be a Christian,
Be an Atheist, or be a martian!
None of these means nothing at all,
till we're each other's emancipation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Above all hagiographies, human is real,
There's nothing more divine than human.
Godliness unfolds only through humanness,
Only sin in the world is the sin of division.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“I only know of one divinity - kindness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love

“We don't need to believe in a grand design to be good people, but we do need to be good people to create a grand design. It's neither about atheism, nor about the so-called religiousness - rather it's about plain, ordinary humanness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“Some people need God, others don't feel the need for it, for whatever reason. But the fact of the matter is, even those who do not believe in God, occasionally end up talking to some sort of fictitious figure, such as a loved one who has passed away. And what's wrong with that?

Personal fiction is a psychological necessity of the individual – hence, a right - why can't we simply accept it as such! Why do we have to diss another person for not believing in the same kind of fiction that we believe in! It is time we become an aid to each other's light, not an impediment.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“All in The Mind (The Sonnet)

God is all in the mind,
What's wrong with that!
Art is also all in the mind,
So, is art nothing but dirt!

Yes, plenty harm has been done,
In the name of God.
The same can be said,
About science and art.

Dividers will always divide,
Haters will always hate.
Apes will find one excuse or another,
To justify their authoritarian trait.

For example, 9/11 wasn't religion's fault,
Any more than Hiroshima was science's fault.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“9/11 wasn't religion's fault, any more than Hiroshima was science's fault.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Personal fiction is a psychological necessity of the individual – hence, a right - why can't we simply accept it as such!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“My divinity is not rooted in god or scripture, my divinity is rooted in human welfare.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets