60+ Agnostic Quotes To Help You Ideological Think

The term “agnostic” typically refers to a person who holds the view that the existence of a higher power or deity is unknown, unknowable, or inherently unknowable. Agnostics neither affirm nor deny the existence of a god or gods, as they believe that the nature of such entities is beyond human comprehension or that there is insufficient evidence to make a conclusive determination.

The concept of agnosticism is often contrasted with theism, which asserts the belief in the existence of a god or gods, and atheism, which denies the existence of a god or gods. Agnosticism can be seen as a position of skepticism or uncertainty regarding metaphysical claims about the divine.

It’s important to note that agnosticism is not necessarily a statement on belief but rather a statement on knowledge or the limits of human understanding. Agnostics may have varying beliefs or attitudes toward religion and spirituality, ranging from complete indifference to actively exploring different religious or philosophical perspectives.

Agnostic Quotes

1. “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence”
— Bertrand Russell

2. “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
— Steven Weinberg

3. “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”
— Gene Roddenberry

4. “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
— Thomas Aquin

5. “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
— Epicurus

6. “Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.”
— Richard Dawkins

7. “I’m probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don’t think anyone really knows. You’ll either find out or not when you get there, until then there’s no point thinking about it.”
— Brad Pitt

8. “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.”
— Albert Einstein

9. “The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
— Carl Sagan

10. “I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.”
— Thomas A. Edison

11. “I don’t want to believe. I want to know.”
— Carl Sagan

12. “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

13. “Faith: not wanting to know what is true.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

14. “Gods don’t kill people. People with Gods kill people.”
— David Viaene

15. “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright

16. “If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.”
— Isaac Asimov

17. “You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend.”
— Blaise Pascal

18. “I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
— Isaac Asimov

19. “The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”
— Richard Francis Burton

20. “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.”
— Clarence Darrow

21. “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”
— Sigmund Freud

22. “I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.”
— Simon Hoggart

23. “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
— Carl Sagan

24. “I’m an agnostic. Sometimes I muse deeply on the forces that are for me invisible. When I am almost close to the idea of God, I feel immediately estranged by the horrors of this world, which he seems to tolerate.”
— Stanislaw Ulam

25. “An agnostic position is one that leaves open the question whether there exists a god or gods, professing to find such a question unanswered or unanswerable. For the atheist, the question has been answered, and in the negative.”
— Jaroslav Pelikan

26. “I refuse to believe in a God who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’.”
— Mark Fuhrman

27. “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic.”
— Albert Einstein

28. “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
— George Bernard Shaw

29. “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.”
— Charles Darwin

30. “I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.”
— Pearl S. Buck

31. “Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic.”
— Hu Shih

32. “Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?”
— Arthur C. Clarke

33. “Where knowledge ends, religion begins.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

34. “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
— Seneca the Younger

35. “The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.”
— Al-Maʿarri

36. “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.”
— Albert Einstein

37. “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
— Susan B. Anthony

38. “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God”
— Thomas Jefferson

39. “An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.”
— Studs Terkel

40. “If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
— Edmond de Goncourt

41. “The prayer of the agnostic: “O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul.””
— Ernest Renan

42. “One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occurred to me that God has Alzheimer’s and has forgotten we exist.”
— Jane Wagner

43. “All religions have been made by men.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

44. “A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”
— Mark Twain

45. “Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic.”
— Hu Shih

46. “Don’t be an agnostic. Be something.”
— Robert Frost

47. “I was a woman, a divorcee, a socialist, an agnostic . . . all possible sins together.”
— Michelle Bachelet

48. “Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.”
— Penn Jillette

49. “Practically all the prominent leaders of thought in China today are openly agnostics and even atheists.”
— Hu Shih

50. “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

51. “I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.”
— Isaac Asimov

52. “There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.”
— Ruth Hurmence Green

53. “If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.”
— Bill Maher

54. “…the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.”
— Thomas Paine

55. “Man created God in his own image.”
— Ludwig Feuerbach

56. “There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”
— Richard Dawkins

57. “So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.”
— Thomas A. Edison

58. “What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you.”
— Steve Buscemi

59. “Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.”
— Edward Gibbon

60. “As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.”
— Francis Collins

61. “Isn’t an agnostic just an atheist without balls?”
— Stephen Colbert

62. “If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.”
— Mikhail Bakunin

63. “I was an agnostic until I realized that I had to choose between God and fate. The idea that humanity and nature are the result of fate was not convincing at all. I find the presence of God everywhere.”
— Andrea Bocelli

64. “No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.”
— Daniel J. Boorstin