Clarence Darrow: Believer

“Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded.”

Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Context: An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. Everyone is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept. Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds, and the Protestants are agnostic to the Catholic creed. Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded. In a popular way, in the western world, an agnostic is one who doubts or disbelieves the main tenets of the Christian faith.

Home , Knowledge , Thinking , Personality

“When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it.”

Clarence Darrow

As quoted in Clarence Darrow for the Defense (1941) by Irving Stone, Ch. 6

Boy , Funny

“It’s not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment.”

Clarence Darrow

People , Fear , Personality

“One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has told so consistent a story as nature.”

Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Truth , Nature

“Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.
Can anyone call this scheme of creation and damnation moral? It defies every principle of morality, as man conceives morality. Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark? There are almost a million species of insects alone. How did Noah match these up and make sure of getting male and female to reproduce life in the world after the flood had spent its force? And why should all the lower animals have been destroyed? Were they included in the sinning of man? This is a story which could not beguile a fairly bright child of five years of age today.”

Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life , God , Age , World

“The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.”

Clarence Darrow

Address to the court in "The Communist Trial", People v. Lloyd (1920)

World , Past

“Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today.”

Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life , Men , Books , Knowledge

“When Voltaire was bornreally but one church which, of course, was ignorant, tyrannical and barbarous in the extreme. All creeds are alike, and whenever there is but one, and the rulers honestly believe in that one, they are bound to be ignorant, barbarous and cruel. All sorts of heresies were punishable by death. If anyone dared to write a pamphlet or book that questioned any part of the accepted faith, the book was at once consigned to flames and the author was lucky if he did not meet the same fate. Religion was not maintained by the precepts of the priest, but by the prison, the torture chamber and the fagot. Everyone believed; no one questioned. The religious creeds, while strict and barbarous, did not interfere with the personal conduct of any of the rulers. They were left free to act as they pleased, so long as they professed to believe in the prevailing faith.”

Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

Death , Fate , Books , Faith

“I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.”

Clarence Darrow

Speech in Toronto (1930); as quoted in "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996) by James A. Haught
As quoted in Jesus: Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis
Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.
As quoted in The New York Times (19 April 1936)
Variant: I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

God