“I am. I am. I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think that I don’t want to be, I think that I ? because ? ugh! I flee.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist philosopher
“I sometimes think that the world will either be saved by psychologists . . . or it will not be saved at all.”
— Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), American humanist psychologist
“There is nothing outside the text.”
— Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), French deconstructionist philosopher
“If a thing is absolutely true, how can it not also be a lie? An absolute must contain its opposite.”
— Charlotte Painter, American writer/educator
Atheists in Europe comprise “an infinitesimally small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research. What we are observing instead [of a revival of Christianity] is a re-paganization [in Europe].”
— Rev. Paul M. Zulehner, Dean of Vienna University’s divinity school (Washington Times, 3/4/05).
“The rise of all sorts of paganism is creating a false spirituality that proves to be a more dangerous rival to the Christian faith than atheism.”
— Rev. Gerald McDermott, Roanoke College (VA) professor of religion and philosophy (Washington Times, 3/4/05)
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”
— Margaret Young (1892-1969), American singer
*“Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history and culture also becomes a dead people.”
— Malcolm X (1925-65), civil rights leader
“A people without a heritage are easily persuaded.”
— Karl Marx (1818-1883), German Jewish philosopher
The atheist worldview of life is “a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.”
— Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
“Atheism is a cruel long term business, and I have gone through it to the end.”
— Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist philosopher
“I like to think there’s still right and wrong. We blur that a lot. When we celebrate misdeeds instead of portraying them as missteps, we’ve lost our way a little bit.”
— Mark Schwann (2005), “One Tree Hill” creator
“Legally speaking, it’s not a difficult decision to make. Morally speaking, it’s a very difficult decision to make…. But I’m not here to make the moral decision. I’m here to make the legal decisions…. My Jesus is a nice guy and not someone to pick up the phone and…punish me.”
— Palm Beach County (FL) Circuit Court Judge Ronald Alvarez about deciding to permit a 13-year-old to get an abortion, 5/2-3/05
“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”
— Emile M. Cioran, Romanian writer and philosopher
“We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings.”
— Roy Hattersley, “Faith does breed charity,” British newspaper Guardian, Monday September 12, 2005, www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5283079-103390,00.html
“The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.”
— Sir William Osler (1849-1919), Canadian physician-educator
“Post-Christian man is not the same as Pre-Christian man. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-be and a spouse lost.”
— C. S. Lewis (1889-1963), Christian apologist and writer, Letters, March 17, 1953
“Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.”
— Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British journalist, satirist and Christian apologist
“No one returns from Christianity to the same state he was before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed.”
— C. S. Lewis (1889-1953), Christian apologist and writer, Letters, September 15, 1953
“By beginning with the up-front assumption that nothing is generally true, the thoroughgoing relativist is essentially starting the conversation by saying, ‘I have nothing to say which is necessarily true; it’s your option to regard what I say as either true or false, and in either case you would be right’.”
— Christiopher C. Shubert, “Challenging Relativism,” The Schwartz Report (Volume 46, Numbr 6, p. 2)
“My mind is not closed…my mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we start out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer…. I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.”
— Richard Dawkins, Time magazine (Canadian edition), 11/13/06, p. 39 (The American Christian College Journal, 1/08, pp. 6-7)
“Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith.”
— C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), British Reformed Baptist pastor