“A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere… God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

— Clive Staples Lewis , book Surprised by Joy

Source: Surprised by Joy (1955), p. 191

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere… God …" by Clive Staples Lewis?

Clive Staples Lewis 272

Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963

Related quotes

“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Temple

Source: The Temple

“No man ever said at the end of his days, "I have read my Bible too much, I have thought of God too much, I have prayed too much, I have been too careful about my soul."”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: Home Truths (1859), Ch. II: "Repent, or Perish", p. 73

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions

“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 62
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

What is an Agnostic? (1953)
1950s

“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.