George Holyoake > Quotes

“Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence.”
― George Jacob Holyoake

“A definition is a map, but it is not the journey.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Dogmatism, the sin of superstition, is excluded from the empire of speculation.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Man is forgiven who believes more than his neighbours, but he is never forgiven if he believes less.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“It is delusive to pull down the altar of superstition and not erect an altar of science in its place. To pack up the household gods of superstition and leave the fireside bare, will hardly do.. Affirmative Atheism must teach that nature is the Bible of truth, work is worship, that duty is dignity, and the unselfish service of others consolation.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Man is forgiven who believes more than his neighbours, but he is never forgiven if he believes less. If he believes more than his neighbours, there is the presumption that he may have made some discovery which may become profitable one day to join in. It may be that he who believes most, may merely possess a more industrious credulity, or possess a greater capacity for hasty assumption. But this is seldom probed. He who believes less may have abandoned some important item of justifiable belief. But when he who believes less than the multitude, confesses to the fact in the face of public disapproval, the probability is that he has inquired into, and sifted evidence which others have taken for granted, and discovered some error which they have accepted. His greater accuracy of mind and exactness of speech are an offence, because a reproach to the careless or unscrupulous intellects of those who conduct life on secondhand opinions.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“The Negative Atheism of mere ignorance, of insensibility, of lust, and gluttony, and drunkenness, of egotism or vanity, whose talk is outrage, and whose spirit is blasphemy; this is the gross negation of God, which superstition begets in its slavery, and nurtures by its terrors. These species of Atheism I recognise only to disown and denounce them. Of these the priest is the author who preaches the natural corruption of the human heart, who inculcates the guilt of Freethought, the distrust of reason, and despair of self-reliant progress. Utterly different from this is the Atheism of reflection, which seeks for conclusive evidence, which listens reverentially for the voice of God, which weighs carefully the teachings of a thoughtful Theism; but refuses to recognise the officious, incoherent babblement of intolerant or presumptuous men. Reflective Atheism is simply a reluctant uncertainty as to the consciousness of Nature, or as to the existence of a Power over Nature.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Atheism—objectionable as it is from wanton negative associations—is a far more wholesome term. It is a defiant, militant word. There is a ring of decision about it. There is no cringing in it. It keeps no terms with superstition. It makes war, and means it. It carries you away from the noisome word-jugglery of the conventional pulpits, and brings you face to face with nature. It is a relief to get out of the crowd who believe because their neighbours do, who pray by rote, and worship through fear; and win your liberty to wander in the refreshing solitude where the heart may be honest, and the intellect free. Affirmative Atheism of the intellect is a proud, honest, intrepid, self-respecting attitude of the mind.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Too many words are the locusts of the mind, which darken the air of the understanding and eat up our meaning.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“The Church is a cell, and the creed is a cage. The cage is lighter, more airy, and less repulsive than the cell, but the imprisonment is complete in both.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“The popular theology, it must be owned, has many repulsive aspects. The vulgarest and most illiterate believer is encouraged to profess a familiar and confident knowledge, hidden from the profoundest philosophers. It is an unanswerable position, that had God spoken, the universe would have been convinced.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“I hope, says Mr. Grote, in his great history of Greece, in a memorable passage that ought not to die out of recollection, 'I hope, when I come to the lives of Socrates and Plato, to illustrate one of the most valuable of their principles, that conscious and confessed ignorance is a better state of mind than the fancy without the reality of knowledge.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Plato in his 'Laws,' remarks that 'Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding.' This just opinion, if applied to mere sensualists, who disbelieve in God because his holiness is a restraint upon their infamous passions, has since been applied to the pure thinkers like Spinoza, to whom it is an insult and an outrage. Let us see how little such a remark is applicable to those who thoughtfully pause before adopting a creed which, however dictated by a feeling of piety, is far less reverential than thoughtful silence.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Cosmism, a thoughtful name, which ought to supersede Atheism in the future, neither denies nor affirms the existence of Deity. It waits for explanation and proof. It admits there is evidence of something, but what that something is, does not appear. There is evidence of more than we know, but what that is we do not know, and it is dishonesty to use a term respecting it, which pretends that we do know.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Hardness, assumption, egotism, insubordination to worth—in one word, irreverence, ought never to be the characteristic of Cosmism. He who vindicates nature and reason, should show that being left to nature, philosophy, reputation, and the laws, there exists self-regulation and reliable rationality.* Cosmism is the highest form of self-reliance; the responsibility, which to others is a necessity, is to him a duty and a pride.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Had Deity desired that his personal existence should be daily recognised and eternally bruited abroad among men, he would have placarded the fact on the walls of nature in letters of light—so luminous, that time should never pale them; so indelibly, that the war of elements should never efface them; so plainly and conclusively, that no priest should ever be able to misconstrue them; and no wayfarer, in this hurrying world, ever be in doubt about them.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Theism is the negation of Nature. It is a species of impiety towards nature, and supplants, by an artificial superstition, the instinctive reverence of the human heart.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Lord Brougham has said that 'a mind uninformed is better than a mind misinformed.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Mere negations give all advantage to superstition; error seems wisdom and wealth when truth is silent.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“Mere Atheism inculcates freedom and intrepidity of the understanding, but may land you in negation, in dogmatism, in denunciation, in irreverence. These are the chasms that lie in the path of mere Atheism.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“If we say God is Light, Love, Truth, Power, Goodness, Law, Principle, we confound attributes with existence. If we say God is a Spirit, God is space, we merely fill the imagination, not satisfy the understanding: it is feeding the thoughts with air, and leaving the intellect hungry. A Trinitarian Deity is one of the scholastic perplexities of the intellect. The first rule of arithmetic is against it. If it means three Gods in one, it is an enigma. If it means three doctrinal aspects of God, it confuses all simplicity of feeling. In the simple, moral heart of man, God is one, and his name is Love; not a weak, vapoury sentimentality, but an austere, healthy love, whose expression is strength, purity, truth, justice, service, and tenderness. But this conception of Deity belongs to the empire of the emotions, it is a matter of feeling, not of proof, and can authorise no intolerance towards others, itself existing only by the sufferance of the intellect, which has chastened its expression, and is supreme over it.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?

“There are two classes of thinkers—one who commence with ignoring Nature, seeking in something outside it for the origin of it, and who look upon the infinite processes of the worlds which people space, with the dull astonishment accorded to mere agencies, rather than with the native wonder and awe which the consciousness of original powers awakens—these are Theists. The other class are those who regard matter as the very garment of the unknown God, to whom every spray, and pebble, and flower, and star is a marvel, a glory, and an inspiration; who, comprehending not an external cause of nature, recognise its existence, its surpassing affluence, its multitudinous marvels, and give them the first place in their wonder, study, reverence, and love—these are Affirmative Atheists.”
― George Holyoake, The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?