23 quotes
The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium.
The Faith of a Heretic (1959)
Faith means not wanting to know what is true.
paraphrasing Nietzsche, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future.
Time is an Artist (1978)
For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
The great artist liberates the emotions and recreates the sheer wonder of childhood without surrendering the development of the intellect.
If it does not upset, it is not philosophy.
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
Much can be left unstated. But if nothing is discredited, it is not philosophy.
The Faith of a Heretic (1963)
I agree with Paul that love is more important than faith and hope; but so are honesty, integrity, and moral courage. The world needs less faith and more love and nobility.
The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
We do not truly possess our humanity and culture as long as we live only in the present, in our own accidental environment.
Hegel (1966)
Organized religion flourishes. And so do thoughtlessness, dishonesty, and hypocrisy.
The Faith of a Heretic (1963)
What makes the decisive difference is not whether religion is persecuted or not, but whether religion is a pious name for conformity or a fighting name for non-conformity.
The Faith of a Heretic (1963)
There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1951)
The main objection to absolute morality is that even if there were absolute moral standards we should have no way of knowing whether we had found them.
Heresy is a set of opinions "at variance with established or generally received principles." In this sense, heresy is the price of all originality and innovation.
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly.
Time is an Artist (1978)
But the four Evangelists agree in ascribing to Jesus evasive and equivocal answers to plain questions, not only those of the high priest and Pilate; and quite generally the Jesus of the New Testament avoids straightforward statements, preferring parables .
There is … a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.