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Quote by Leo Tolstoy

“And the cause of everything is that which we call God.”

Author

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer and thinker, a prominent representative of 19th-century Russian literature. His works deeply revealed social contradictions and human nature, and had a profound impact on the world. more

“How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.”

Source: The Descent of Man

“I sing songs that I have lived or I write them because I have lived them. I think the believability factor is key.”

Thinking Writing Song Keys Factors Believability

Author:Kelly Clarkson

“I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.”

Source: The Descent of Man: And Selection in Relation to Sex

“But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice.”

Source: Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution

“... The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.”

Mind Ideas Quality Wise Atheism Limits Goodness Intelligent Arise Operations Reflecting Agnosticism

Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature

“To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.”

Order Atheism Prove Senses Supreme Unexpected Agnosticism Circuits Recourse Supreme Being Veracity

Book:Essays and Treatises on several subjects, etc. New edition

Source: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, etc. New edition

“What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?”

Ifs Desire Atheism Mankind Words Of Wisdom Ambition Vanity Folly What If Terrified Agnosticism Desire For Power

Book:The Dawn of Day

Source: The Dawn of Day

“Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.”

Mind Atheism Words Of Wisdom Deceived Skeptical Agnosticism Great Minds

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that he created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws.”