“I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“I don't understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.”
Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist
The Book of Delusions (1936)
“I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.”
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
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.
Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer
Captain Richard Sharpe and Miss Sarah Fry, p. 205
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author
Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
“I was sharpshooting. I don't think I missed a shot. It was no time to miss.”
Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient
Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York
Context: There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off just as fast as I could. I was sharpshooting. I don't think I missed a shot. It was no time to miss.
In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.
Suddenly a German officer and five men jumped out of the trench and charged me with fixed bayonets. I changed to the old automatic and just touched them off too. I touched off the sixth man first, then the fifth, then the fourth, then the third and so on. I wanted them to keep coming.
I didn't want the rear ones to see me touching off the front ones. I was afraid they would drop down and pump a volley into me. — and I got hold of the German major, and he told me if I wouldn't kill any more of them he would make them quit firing. So I told him all right, if he would do it now. So he blew a little whistle, and they quit shooting and come down and gave up.
Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist
The Atheism Tapes (2004)
Context: Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. You know, it's silly to say I don't like God because I don't believe in God, but in the same sense that I don't like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character. He's a god who will... who obsessed the degree to which people worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him.
Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian
Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (2006)
Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher
Response after being asked "Do you regard yourself as a religious person?", in an interview with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/18/february-18-2011-ernest-gaines/8169/, February 18, 2011