Agnosticism

“I say that I am an agnostic. People think that's pusillanimous and covering your bets. But it's not based on any belief or yearning for an afterlife but on the fact that we actually know so little about the cosmos. It is a tribute to the complexity and, at our present stage of development, the unknowability of the universe.”

“Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.”

“Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong.”

“Stephen Colbert: So you're an agnostic?Colbert: Isn't that just an atheist without balls?”

“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.”

“I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.”

“Strictly speaking, agnosticism is not an interpretation of the universe at all, but a sophisticated re-statement of the question.”

“One should not have the arrogance to declare that God does not exist.”

“No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.”

“Unbelief was easier than belief, much less demanding and subtly flattering because the agnostic felt himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And then unbelief haunted by faith, as she knew by experience, produced a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involved real suffering.”

“There are people whose mind would recoil from actual negation, but who have no objection to complete indifference; and it is this that is the most to be feared, for, to deny something, one must think about it to some extent, however little that may be, whereas an attitude of indifference makes it possible not to think about it at all.”

“I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.”

“Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.”

“Idealism in philosophy is a defence, sometimes extremely elaborate, sometimes less so, of clericalism, of a doctrine that places faith above science, or side by side with science, or in some way or another gives faith a place. Agnosticism (from the Greek words “a” no and “gnosis” knowledge) is vacillation between materialism and idealism, i.e., in practice it is vacillation between materialist science and clericalism.”

“With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.”

“The mistake of agnosticism, so it seems to me, has been that it has said not merely "I do not know," but "I will not consider." Such a position, I think, is hampering, not only to life, but to truth.”

“"Clear views and certain," Mr. Thomas Hardy once wrote of his own agnosticism. Well, we cannot all have the certainty of agnostics.”

“I was much cheered, on my arrival, by the warder at the gate, who had to take particulars about me. He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God. This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.”

“Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.”

“It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.”