Pss. 130:5 “I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.”
ATHEIST
“I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'”
[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]
― Philip Pullman
“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
“...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."
[Letter to William Short, 13 April 1820]
― Thomas Jefferson,
AGNOSTIC
“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”
― Bertrand Russell
“You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.”
― Carl Sagan
“My lack of faith in God is not a dilapidated house.
It does not need to be razed to the ground or burned down to cinders.
I refuse to be the wounded woman on a cross
that you crucify with your disapproval like nails;
I will only be the woman who believes in thunderstorms
the same way lightning loves the tops of trees it strikes
every time it gets tired of being pent up in an unforgiving sky,
the only difference is that I believe these are natural weather phenomenons,
not God’s belly rumbling or synapses firing.
When my doorway is filled with groups of people
wielding religious conversion pamphlets like crossbows,
I will be the martyr who steps aside to let the arrows
crack through the plaster in my wall instead of piercing my chest.
This is not a eulogy to the believer I could have been.
This is a battle cry to the believer I always have been,
believer in sunsets like splashes of paint, handholding
like willow branches brushing one another, new mornings
after old nights spent drowning in despair, believer
in love as an entire language instead of a single word.
Just because my beliefs align themselves on a different spectrum
does not mean they are the wrong wavelength or color.
And even though I think the universe was created by the Big Bang
instead of a God with magic dust shooting from his fingertips,
my universe does not contain fewer stars.”
― Meggie Royer
FAITH
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis
“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
― Elbert Hubbard
“Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can't always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.”
― Lauren Kate
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
BELIEF
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”
― Mitch Albom
“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.”
― Stuart Chase
HOPE
“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
― Paulo Coelho
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson
“The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.”
― Kalu Ndukwe Kalu
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