Agnostic Quotes & Sayings

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic. — Charles Darwin

I love the idea of God, but it's not stylistically in keeping with the way I function. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God. I can see that people who believe in God are happier ... But I doubt. — Carrie Fisher

It is only the forcible propagation of conventional Christianity that makes the agnostic so bitter toward the church. He knows that all the doctrines cannot possibly be true, but he would view them with toleration if he were asked merely to let them alone for the benefit of the masses whom they can help and succour. — H.P. Lovecraft

I was raised Jewish by atheistic-agnostic parents. During this journey, I had people from all walks and all faiths try to help. A Jewish priest who I was friends with wanted to lay hands on me - I didn't ask questions about how - I just said when and where and how often do you want to do it? I didn't argue. — Mark Nepo

I began asking, 'How can we know Christianity is true?' Sadly, none of the adults in my life offered an answer. Eventually I decided Christianity must not have any answers, and I became an agnostic. — Nancy Pearcey

Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic. — Hu Shih

A belief is not true because it is useful — Henri Frederic Amiel

I'm a linear thinking agnostic, but not an atheist folks. — Neil Peart

At that moment, in the temple of her lovers' tangled limbs, Lea felt the presence of the Divine close by, immanent and imminent - everywhere and everywhen - and it was a sublime feeling, one that made her feel infinitely powerful and infinitely small, both at the same time.

A good fuck can make even an agnostic see God - a fact that explained Lea's parents' fascination with Tantra, something about which Lea thought as little as possible. — K.D. West

Let's face it: suffering discredits goodness. I'm agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he'll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, but how much happens beyond that book, I can't say. That's agnosticism in its bleakest and most honest form. Don't judge me, yet believe me when I tell you that years of abuse tend to wring out every ounce of one's ability to understand and adhere to faith in standard form. — Chila Woychik

I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I'd said in a book I wrote that I wasn't a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people's holding beliefs other than their own? — Alan Alda

I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God. I just don't - I don't have the energy for that, and so I ... Agnostic separates me from the conduct of atheists whether or not there is strong overlap between the two categories, and at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If I had to label myself now, I'd call myself a Taoist-Christian-agnostic quantum mechanic. — Moby

I'm fairly uncertain about most things. I mean, I'd be an agnostic, only I can never quite make up my mind. — C.J. Stone

I spent most of my adult life essentially agnostic or an atheist. — Jim Gaffigan

But whether I become a believer or remain an agnostic, my belief or disbelief must derive its source from within, not from without. I, myself, must create its symbols. The transcendental is that which produces its own form. I will never discover its secret if I do not find it in my own heart; if I do not possess it already I shall never be able to acquire it. — Oscar Wilde

There's no bigger atheist than me. Well, I take that back. I'm a cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away from full-fledged Christian. — Adam Carolla

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind. — Charles Darwin

I'm going to kill him. Even as I said it, I couldn't believe my reaction. Apparently there's something in the Montana water that instantly transforms an agnostic, Starbucks-loving, vegetarian pacifist into a God-and-country-loving protector of all women and cattle. — Renee Carlino

I don't know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic. — Stephanie Perkins

I grew up in a Catholic family in the Midwest. And I knew people of different faiths and people that were atheists and people that were agnostic. — Jim Gaffigan

Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this. — Richard P. Feynman

What's curious about the left's current obsession with Timothy McVeigh is that it proves that - despite a frantic search for 15 years - liberals have come across no better evidence of burgeoning "right-wing extremist" violence than a drug-taking, self-described "agnostic" who was thrown out of the Michigan Militia and who proclaimed, "Science is my religion." That sounds more like Bill Maher than Rush Limbaugh. — Ann Coulter

Unbelief, in distinction from disbelief, is a confession of ignorance where honest inquiry might easily find the truth. - "Agnostic" is but the Greek for "ignoramus." — Tryon Edwards

Still, in this book, we will treat the chakras as if they are actual components of a subtle body, even as we leave the overarching question of their existential status (physical? psychical? imaginal? fictitious?) unanswered. This agnostic approach means that you don't actually have to believe in the literal reality of chakras to get something out of this book and start working with the chakra system. If — Tai Morello

You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.
'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.'
'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things. — G.K. Chesterton

The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth. — Sydney J. Harris

An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. — Clarence Darrow

Why would god allow the Holocaust to happen? If god made everything, why did he invent sin to trick us and then hold our sins against us? Why are there so many religions in the world if god created the world and wants us to be Christian? Why does god allow people to fight wars over him? What if you were born in a different culture and never even heard of Jesus Christ - would god send you to hell for not being Christian? And if so, do you believe that's fair? Why are men always the leaders in your church? Aren't women capable of leading too? Isn't such a patriarchal system sexist in this day and age? Why do so many babies die? Why are there so many poor people in the world? Did Jesus visit any other planets in distant unknown universes? — Matthew Quick

Every agnostic has a minister, Mike. Otherwise, they's be atheists. — Jared C. Wilson

In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him. — Thomas Huxley

W. C. Fields, a lifetime agnostic, was discovered reading a Bible on his deathbed. 'I'm looking for a loop-hole,' he explained. — W.C. Fields

I never graduated to being an atheist. I only graduated to being an agnostic. — Christopher Durang

Without the intervention of the civil authority what would our percepts become?- Platonic laws. — Philipp Melanchthon

I guess I started to realize that being an agnostic was such a wimpy position. — George Meyer

I wanted to marry the first girl that I fell in love with, but there were religious differences.
I was an agnostic and she was a Polycarbonate — Josh Stern

I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for. — Penelope Lively

It is necessary for men to be deceived in religion. — Marcus Terentius Varro

So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history. — Sun Myung Moon

That's why I had a reduction when I was twenty-one," which is when his expression morphed into one of horror.
You'd have thought I told him I made an amazing stew from tiny babies and puppy tongues.
"Why on earth would you do that? That's like God giving you a beautiful gift and you kicking him in the nuts."
I laughed. "God? I thought you were agnostic, Professor."
"I am. But if I could motorboat perfect tits like yours I might be able to find Jesus."
I felt my blush warm my cheeks. "Because Jesus totally lives in my cleavage?"
"Not anymore he doesn't. Your boobs are now too small for him to be comfortable in there." He shook his head, and I couldn't stop laughing. "So selfish, Ziggs, — Christina Lauren

The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but so insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse ... This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go glad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels ... Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. — G.K. Chesterton

I'm an optimistic agnostic. I think the second we die, within a matter of seconds, everybody else arrives, and that's the party, and you live your hell on earth. — Mike Dirnt

It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne's last night and to receive no plain answers," he said. "Perhaps this is because we can't understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God's ways and God's thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable. — Mary Doria Russell

It may be the case that [post-Holocaust] the authentic Jewish
agnostic and the authentic Jewish believer are closer than at
any previous time. — Emil Fackenheim

My father was an agnostic. — Jerry Falwell

On the science of global climate change, I'm an agnostic. I've seen Al Gore's movie, and I've read reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I've also listened to the 'skeptics.' I don't know who's right. — Robert Bryce

Belief in God meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah; and I would not pretend I did not know whether it existed or not. — George Bernard Shaw

There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth
hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every self-serving television interview. On this matter, the filmmaker was agnostic
he came from money, and couldn't see the urgency. Like many of his ilk, he sometimes confused poverty (which must be eradicated!) with folklore (which must be preserved!), but it was a genuine confusion, without a hint of ill intention, which only made it more infuriating. — Daniel Alarcon

An agnostic Buddhist would not regard the Dharma as a source of answers to questions of where we came from, where we are going, what happens after death. He would seek such knowledge in the appropriate domains: astrophysics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, etc. — Stephen Batchelor

My mother was very agnostic. She would never set foot in the synagogue, she couldn't be doing with it. — Janet Suzman

It is difficult to believe in a religion that places such a high premium on chastity and virginity. — Madonna Ciccone

Spiritual but not religious" is an expression of a very human yearning for an opening of mind and heart - a sense of soul and spirit that enhances day-to-day experience instead of tamping it down and channeling it into the narrow confines of stick-and-carrot orthodoxy. It's a rejection of traditional tenets and pieties, of doctrine and dogma and judgment. It resists the usual attempts to pigeonhole, saying, "Spare me your labels." It is, at heart, agnostic. - — Lesley Hazleton

Believing that only under God Almighty, to Whom we render all homage, do we Americans hold our vast Power, we shall guarantee to all persons absolute freedom of religious worship, provided, however, that no atheist, agnostic, believer in Black Magic, nor any Jew who shall refuse to swear allegiance to the New Testament, nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the Pledge to the Flag, shall be permitted to hold any public office or to practice as a teacher, professor, lawyer, judge, or as a physician, except in the category of Obstetrics. — Sinclair Lewis

One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution ... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic. — Felix Frankfurter

I'm an agnostic in the truest sense of the word. I think about these things - I grew up Roman Catholic, I've been interested in Hinduism, in Eastern religions, but I'm not dedicated to anything - I go through periods where I think maybe it's all nonsense; maybe it's 'The Matrix ... ' I'm open to various ideas. — Ronald D. Moore

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. — Robert G. Ingersoll

You need to know where to go,' Sanya said.
'Yes,'
'And you are going to consult four large pizzas for guidance.'
'Yes,' I said.
... 'There is, I think, humour here which does not translate well from English into sanity.'
'That's pretty rich coming from the agnostic Knight of the Cross with a holy Sword who takes his orders from an archangel.' I said.
- Harry Dresden & Sanya, Changes, Jim Butcher — Jim Butcher

I could become like that dyslexic agnostic in the old joke - the one who lies in bed and tries to figure out if his dog exists. — Anne Lamott

In any situation that calls for you to persuade, convince or manage someone or a group of people to do something, the ability to tell a purposeful story will be your secret sauce. Telling to win through purposeful stories is situation, industry, gender, demographic, and psychographic-agnostic. It's an all-purpose, everyone wins tool. — Peter Guber

Participation in the collective life of the polis both restrains the extraordinary individual and enlarges the ordinary individual, allowing him to participate in the extraordinary. An individual can achieve participatory excellence via the accomplishments of the polis and need not always be caught up in the agnostic struggle to outdo his peers. — Rebecca Goldstein

In America, now, let us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever - fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love one's enemies. A tall order, that - perhaps the tallest of all. — Jon Meacham

He had remained steadfast in agnosticism and therefore, as Mabel took comfort in remarking, 'he never denied God.' Neither did he affirm God. — Robert V. Bruce

I have always considered myself as an Agnostic ... — Alexander Graham Bell

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

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

I definitely have a spiritual outlook. I don't usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer, The Power of Intention, which I loved. I'm not a religious guy, in fact I'm probably agnostic but I thought what this writer had to say was really powerful. — Chris Pine

Most people past college age are not atheists. It's too hard to be in society, for one thing. Because you don't get any days off. And if you're an agnostic you don't know whether you get them off or not. — Mort Sahl

What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Virtually every agnostic lives like an atheist, living completely irreligious lives — Dennis Prager

I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance. — A. J. Jacobs

Everybody has faith of some kind in one thing or another. Even the atheist has faith that there is no God. And the agnostic has faith in his belief that he is unable to believe. — Ron Brackin

Properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic. — Robert Flint

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

I see little difference in the attitudes of those who consider themselves Christian and those who are openly secular and agnostic. Most Christian citizenship appears to be clearly right here - on this little bit of very unreal estate. — Richard Rohr

Essentially I'm a pantheist-agnostic. I worship many deities with equal amounts of confusion. — Jonathan Ames

Whether conservative or liberal, fundamentalist or agnostic, the more students learn of biology, the more they accept evolution. — Kenneth R. Miller

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs. — Simon Hoggart

I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries. — H.L. Mencken

You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist. — Studs Terkel

Far too many young people today have no spiritual roots. The've been deprived of values by an agnostic, contemporary culture. — Billy Graham

I'm a teleological, existential agnostic. — Woody Allen

I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time.
She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic. — Woody Allen

Both need each other: The agnostic cannot be content to not know, but must be in search of the great truth of faith; the Catholic cannot be content to have faith, but must be in search of God all the time, and in the dialogue with others, a Catholic can learn more about God in a deeper fashion. — Pope Benedict XVI

Don't be an agnostic. Be something. — Robert Frost

The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them - teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh - the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so. — Richard Dawkins

I keep living as a committed Christian, even on the days when I don't feel like one. Even on the days when the agnostic side of the faith spectrum looks pretty inviting, even on the days when doubt takes hold and shakes me to the core, I keep moving. I keep living as if the sun will rise, as if I'll survive the waters of baptism, as if Jesus will indeed carry me safely across the falls. — Jason Boyett

I was a woman, a divorcee, a socialist, an agnostic ... all possible sins together. — Michelle Bachelet

I want to thank you, especially those people who are agnostic or atheist. I don't mean any offense by the things I said of the spirit world. Thank you for allowing me to speak about the spiritual, because I can't talk about my life or writing without mentioning that. — Sandra Cisneros

I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

I grew up in an agnostic broad-minded family. — Laura Z. Hobson

My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic. — Carl Sagan

The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted — G.K. Chesterton

I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist ... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate. — Alejandro Amenabar

Gods dont kill people. People with Gods kill people. — David Viaene

No one, even as a joke, could call a member of the all-Union Communist Party a Neo-Hegelian, a Neo-Kantian, a Subjectivist, an Agnostic, or, God forbid, a Revisionist. But "epicurean" sounded so harmless it could not possibly imply that one was not an orthodox Marxist. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The law is agnostic about truth. — Alan Dershowitz

I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. — Thomas Huxley

Included among the ecclesiastical works on his bedroom shelves were the writings of "The Great Agnostic," Robert Ingersoll, whom the brothers and Katharine were encouraged to read. "Every mind should be true to itself - should think, investigate and conclude for itself," wrote Ingersoll. It was the influence of Ingersoll apparently that led the brothers to give up regular attendance at church, a change the Bishop seems to have accepted without protest. — David McCullough

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

My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them." I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits - the relevant fruits - are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice. And whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends. — Reinhold Niebuhr