Quotes & Sayings About Foxholes

People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes. — Kurt Vonnegut

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises. — Paul Krugman

When I was eleven or twelve, we had this real old guy as a Sunday school teacher. Mom said he'd been in some war: Iraq, Vietnam ... I forget. Anyway, almost every class he'd say, "There are no atheists in foxholes, kids." At the time, it was just weird. What did we know about either atheists or foxholes? Nothing. But I sort of understood it now. — Mike Mullin

We don't pray in foxholes because we are ready to meet our Maker. We pray because we don't want to. — Harlan Coben

There are plenty of atheists in foxholes. What I don't see are Christians in foxholes. If a Christian soldier takes a bullet to the knee, he will undoubtedly first call for a medic, not a priest. Reliance on god is typically only available when a problem can be ignored without discomfort or when the problem belongs to others (where it can be ignored without discomfort). When the chips are down, like when you have a serious illness or you've been shot or you're at war, even the most devout Christians rely on humans (doctors or other soldiers) even though they'll swear up and down that it's god helping them. — Sam Singleton

There are Atheists in foxholes
Atheists in hurricanes
There are Atheists in all the roles
Denied by your refrains
Atheists are your fellow citizens
People who love and laugh and cry
Atheists are your relatives and friends
Don't insult them with a lie
Atheists in many foxholes served
And some have had to die
Give Atheists the thanks deserved
Don't dismiss them with a lie
Atheists are all around you
They work, they help, they care
And no matter what you think is true
Atheists are everywhere
And no matter what you think is true
They do not want your prayer — Edwin Kagin

Maybe there are only atheists in foxholes. If the faithful truly and fully believe in a protective deity, why would they dive into a foxhole to protect themselves from the bullets whizzing by ? A part of their brain knows damn well that if they do not protect themselves, the bullets will hardly discriminate between those who claim faith and those who reject it. — J. Anderson Thomson

Were there atheists in foxholes during World War II? Of course, as can be verified by my dogtags . . . A veteran of Omaha Beach in 1944, I insisted upon including 'None' instead of P, C, or J as my religious affiliation. — Warren Allen Smith

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker ... but as survivors. Survivors who don't get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like. — Jenny Lawson

If you weren't humping, you were waiting. I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and the heat and the endless paddies. Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You'd be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you'd feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn't water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you'd feel the stuff eating away at important organs. You'd try to relax. You'd uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go. Well, you'd think, this isn't so bad. And right then you'd hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you'd be squealing pig squeals. That kind of boredom. I — Tim O'Brien

This is our foxhole, and in foxholes, sometimes faith is all you've got. — James R. Hannibal

There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. 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. — Peter Steele

My favorite picture is a picture of American soldiers surrounding a guy in a foxhole, Iraqi soldier, and the American guy says, "We're not going to harm you. We're American soldiers." — George H. W. Bush

I don't believe in God, though I'm not prepared to call myself an atheist either. You know the old phrase: 'There are no atheists in foxholes.' I've never been in a foxhole, and if I ever find myself in a foxhole, I'll let you know if I believe in God or not. — Ed Asner

There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke — Andrew Ross Sorkin

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle. — John F. Kennedy

Whatever you want, love, I'll give to you even if it means I'm made to crawl through foxholes and bodies and bullets to do it. You are the reason I fight this war. You are the victory that waits me on the other side of the gunpowder. — Eden Butler

There may or may not be atheists in foxholes, but I'm certain there are none in the Ku Klux Klan. — George Carlin

My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. — George S. Patton

Was he the kind of man you wanted next to you in a foxhole? - a saying used almost always by men who had never been in foxholes about other men who had never been in foxholes either. — David Halberstam

Old soldiers sometimes say, "There are no atheists in foxholes." (A foxhole, in military slang, is a shallow pit in a dangerous place on the battlefield.) — N. T. Wright

It may be true that there are no atheists in foxholes. But you don't find many Christians there, either. Or, about as many of one as the other. — Edward Abbey

I got shot in the head by my own guys in my foxhole. And they didn't even give me an honorable death. — Bill Vaughan

There's a Chaplain who never visited the front. — Kurt Vonnegut

There are no atheists in foxholes isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. — James K. Morrow

That's Washington. That's the place where you find people getting ready to jump out of the foxholes before the first shot is fired. — George W. Bush

They say there are no atheists in foxholes. I say there are no atheists when you're begging God to keep alive the person you love. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

He isn't a government or an army. He's a guy. No matter what you think of any particular war, you've got to feel something for some poor guy ripped out of his life and handed a gun and sent somewhere to kill other guys who've been ripped out of their lives and sent to do the same thing, and while they're both shivering in their foxholes, scared they're not going to see another sunrise, all the fat cats, all the generals and politicos and priests and mullahs and tribal elders who started the whole damn thing, sit way to the rear, moving their chess pieces around." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he took a breath. "He got handed the dirty end of a dirty stick but he handled it. You've got to respect that. — F. Paul Wilson

The old refrain is that there are no atheists in foxholes. That's nonsense. They are there by the millions. There is little in combat that will lead one to look upon the Creator with favor. What can't be there, instead, is the individualist, the selfish, the self-consumed, the self-centered, the aloof loner. Such a man cannot long survive. The terror of combat cannot be described by fear of death. There are worse things. The world can suddenly become a very cold place...He needs warmth, a fire, to survive: His discipline, his training, his duty, honor and country, his family, and ultimately the very oak of his manhood are thrown into the blaze, but they are not enough to save him. At the end, he needs the warmth of his comrades. Otherwise, all he will have with which to face the cold dark will be his own spent soul. — Frank Boccia

Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand. — Victor Hugo

I would say that I definitely became much more religious. They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and this stroke put me into a very deep foxhole. Yet that feeling of faith sustained me, so I have no feelings of anger or regret. — Mark Kirk

Perhaps, the answer is that my ravaged mind rails against the idea of God, but something deeper in me calls out as if God might answer. 'There are not foxholes,' I guess, and depression is the deepest and deadliest foxhole I've been in. It may be the 'dark night of the soul' that the mystics talk about but in depression it is not so much that one becomes lost in the dark as one becomes the dark. — Parker J. Palmer

I struggled for something to cling to, the way soldiers in foxholes picture their families, or a flag.
My car, I thought crazily. This fucker crashed the Wongmobile. And for that, he must taste death. — David Wong

Planes are my foxhole. I'm always on my knees in them. — Patricia Hampl

More powerful than drugs, than God or death or fear itself, are stories. With less instinct than any flatworm, we look for them to tell us what to do, how to behave, how we're going to end up. There're plenty of atheists in foxholes, but none without a personal mythology that gives them meaning. When life seems long and meaningless, stories make it short and exciting, make every accident into a test, into enemy action, into a Plot. — Anonymous