“I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life.”

Source: Gilead

Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. 115
Context: When in sickness I go to a physician, he may find it necessary to prescribe a very painful treatment-there is no self-contradiction in my submitting to it. No, but if on the other hand I suddenly find myself in trouble, an object of persecution, because, because I have gone to that physician: well, then then there is a self-contradiction. The physician has perhaps announced that he can help me with regard to the illness from which I suffer, and perhaps he can really do that-but there is an "aber" [but] that I had not thought of at all. The fact that I get involved with this physician, attach myself to him-that is what makes me an object of persecution; here is the possibility of offense. So also with Christianity. Now the issue is: will you be offended or will you believe. If you will believe, then you push through the possibility of offense and accept Christianity on any terms. So it goes; then forget the understanding; then you say: Whether it is a help or a torment, I want only one thing, I want to belong to Christ, I want to be a Christian.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

To his official biographer Kenneth Harris two years before his death. In Kenneth Harris, Attlee, pp. 563-4.
1960s

Interview in documentary "Listen" (1992)
1990s

Source: Prayer for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 55

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 74

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 11-20, p. 87; spoken by Mr. Mallon