Hans Kung Quotes

I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.

I absolutely believe in Heaven and Hell. They're just like what the Bible says they are.

You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think...of any man as damned

I believe in one, incomprehensible God, the immortality of the soul and eternal retribution for our acts.

If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell . . . how much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

I believe in a packed Heaven and an empty Hell.

Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife.

I sing about heaven and hell, angels and demons.

The lyrics are a lot about those big questions: why are we here, how did we get here, what's the point, and what's next. When those questions come up with fans, I would absolutely share with them what has helped me and where I stand on what it is that I believe.

I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality.

Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.

Years ago I was on television having a discussion with Billy Graham about atheism. He was saying, even if you're right and I'm wrong, and there's nothing after, I will have had a better life than you, because I do believe there was something. And I couldn't argue with that, even though I wanted to.

I live for now, not for what happens after I die. I'm going to hell, not heaven. The devil has all the good gear. What's God got? The Inspiral Carpets and nuns.

I have discovered that the people who believe most strongly in the next life do the most good in the present one.

My views about hell are very traditional.

People will never set their faces decidedly towards heaven, and live like pilgrims, until they really feel that they are in danger of hell.

I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless and that it is good for us all that it should be so, even if it runs counter to our own wishes. As I see it, I'm here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it.

Our faith should be expressed in working toward a better planet for our children and not the selfish, juvenile hope for a better afterlife for ourselves. I don't think anyone is going to Hell, because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill will on others.

No God can put a man in hell in another world, who has made a little heaven in this. God cannot make a man miserable if that man has made somebody else happy.

Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty, and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment.

My principal objections to orthodox religion are two: slavery here and hell hereafter.

It says right here you've got to be saved to go to heaven. But the way I see it, you've only got to be yourself to go to hell.

If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife.

Heaven & Hell are both creations of desire.

I don't think hell exists. I happen to believe in life after death but I don't think it's got a thing to do with reward and punishment. Religion is always in the control business and that's something which people don't really understand.