Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2005 Fall Issue -- Quotation Library: Understanding Unbelief

Our Fall 2005 theme is: “Understanding Unbelief: Smart Evangelism Welcomes Dialogue.” Enjoy the related quotes below.

QUOTES PERTAINING TO UNBELIEF:

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Voltaire, French philosopher (1694-1778). He also said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” Thomas Jefferson; 3rd president of US (1743-1826).
“With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799).
“Religion is the self-consciousness and self- feeling of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself.” Karl Marx (1818-1883), On Religion.
“I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.” Jules Renard (1864-1910).
“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), English poet, critic. Moral and Religious Aphorisms.
“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too petty--I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Antichrist (1888).
“Is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), The Twilight of the Idols (1888).
“Perhaps the day will come when the most solemn concepts which have caused the most fights and suffering, the concepts ‘God’ and ‘sin,’ will seem no more important to us than a child’s toy or a child’s pain seem to an old man. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Beyond Good and Evil, 1886.
“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.” John Buchan, Scottish author & politician (1875-1940).
“I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else’s. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there’s no truth.” Flannery O’Connor, U.S. author (1925–1964), Wise Blood (1952).
“I am a sort of collector of religions, and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all.” George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Major Barbara (1907).
“Judaism had been a religion of the father; Christianity became a religion of the son. The old God the Father fell back behind Christ; Christ the son took his place, just has every son had hoped to do in primeval times.” Sigmund Freud (1850-1939), Moses and Monotheism, 1938.
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).
“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1869-1959).
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." Robert A. Heinlein (1907-P), author.
"Unbelief is not the only way of suppressing the truth about God... It is only the most honest." Merold Westphal, Taking St. Paul Seriously.
“To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.” Woody Allen, actor, director (1935-P).
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.” Laurence J. Peter, US educator & writer (1919-1988), paraphrasing Sir Walter Scott.

QUOTES PERTAINING TO BELIEF:

“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” The Apostle Peter (1 Peter 3:15).
“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart of man is restless until it finds rest in Thee.” St. Augustine (354 AD - 430 AD), Confessions.
“They can conquer who believe they can.” Virgil, Roman poet (70 BC-19 BC).
"Human things must be known to be loved: but Divine things must be loved to be known." Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (1623-1662).
“Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds.” Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Enoch Arden, 1864.
“It’s not dying for faith that is so hard, it’s living up to it.” William Makepeace Thackeray, English author (1811-1863).
“Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Alice in Wonderland.
"Man seeks not so much God as the miraculous." The Grand Inquisitor (Ivan's story), in The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevski (1821-1881). Dostoyevski also wrote “Do away with religion and everything is acceptable."
“If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.” G. K. Chesterton, English author & mystery novelist (1874-1936).
“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.” C. S. Lewis (1989-1963).
"Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it." C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, "First and Second Things" (1942).
“All the essentials of Hinduism would, I think, remain unimpaired if you subtracted the miraculous, and the same is almost true of Mohammedanism. But you cannot do that with Christianity. It is precisely the story of a great Miracle. A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian.” C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Miracles.
“The opposite of joy is not sorrow, it is unbelief.” Leslie D. Weatherhead, pastor, author (1893-1976).
“The notion that it is secularism, not Judeo-Christian values, that enabled scientific inquiry, constitutes perhaps the greatest propaganda victory in history. Virtually every great scientist from Sir Isaac Newton to the beginning of 20th century saw scientific inquiry as the study of divine design.” Dennis Prager. The case for Judeo-Christian values: Without man, the environment is insignificant. June 28, 2005.
“The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.” Josiah Gilbert Holland.
"There is a difference between a good sound reason for our faith, and a reason that sounds good." Mary Asquith.
“I fear God, and next to God I chiefly fear him who fears Him not” Saadi.
“The more I know of astronomy, the more I believe in God.” Heber D. Curtis.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1