As a first approximation, I define "belief" not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as read more

As a first approximation, I define "belief" not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as the subject's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as true.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those read more

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to read more

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.

The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.

The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.

God brings men into deep waters not to drown them, but to cleanse them.

God brings men into deep waters not to drown them, but to cleanse them.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means, read more

to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means, to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating; but the radical and universal read more

I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating; but the radical and universal consciousness of the death of God is still ahead of us; perhaps we shall have to colonize the stars before it is finally borne in upon us that God is not out there.