“He who stifles free discussion, secretly doubts whether what he professes to believe is really true.”

“He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt
They'd immediately go out.”

“A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse; but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.”

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

“The question to ask believers is this: “Does it really matter whether what you believe about God is true—or don’t you care?””

“He still wasn’t sure whether he believed it was true, even. But right now, it needed to be, and so it was.”

“But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

“The nature of man is such that he tends to believe what he wants to believe. Whether it is true or not usually provides only a brief hesitation. Men believe on the basis of their likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, much of what we believe to be true may be partially true. Absolute truth or absolute falsehood is rare. A total falsehood is easier to detect than a partial falsehood. Even a total truth is totally true only in context.”

“The profession of religion was not the same thing as godliness, and he was coming to doubt whether the insistence upon minute conformities of outward conduct and the hair-splitting doctrines were not devices of Satan to entangle souls.”

“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”