Quotes About Doubt

Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another.

Once a person believes - really believes - that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.

Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.

The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside. The moderation we see among nonfundamentalists is not some sign that faith itself has evolved; it is, rather, the product of the many hammer blows of modernity that have exposed certain tenets of faith to doubt.

If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon—because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.

Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.

To point out nonepistemic motives in another's view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt upon a person's connection to the world as it is.

In the best case, faith leaves otherwise well-intentioned people incapable of thinking rationally about many of their deepest concerns; at worst, it is a continuous source of human violence.

Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident.

An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl—even once in a million years—casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.

Faith is little more than the shadow cast by our hope for a better life.

It is therefore in the very nature of faith to serve as an impediment to further inquiry.

Some say while religious fundamentalists betray reason. Moderates betray faith and reason equally. -Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion(Documentary)

Faith-based religion must suffer the same slide into obsolescence

Every day after I wake up, I think, 'Wait... this can't be real; I'm still going to wake up.'

I don't think anybody ever saw anybody taking anything.

That's just it. What if I can't protect you? I'll be outnumbered, outgunned. What if I can't get you out of there?

So you're saying your kissing me back was just a pity thing? Because it sure didn't feel that way to me.

Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe that it's enough.

If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.

Two types of voices command your attention today. Negative ones fill your mind with doubt, bitterness, and fear. Positive ones purvey hope and strength. Which one will you choose to heed?

The strength of your faith is not measured by the absence of doubt, but by the faithfulness of your life in the face of doubt.

I don't believe in anything and that makes me stronger than you think

In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.