Albert Einstein Quotes

Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never left me.

I am fond of saying that reading the Bible turned me into an atheist.

I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport.

I was born a Catholic and now I'm a lapsed Catholic. I'm something but I'm not a believer any more.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

I believed in God my whole life, and then strayed away from it in my teen-age years, until recently.

I'm a Roman Catholic. Or was. I was brought up that way and used to say my prayers every night, but I don't pray to God any more. I might use the usual phrases I picked up from my parents, 'Oh, if God spares me next year...' or 'Please God...' but they're only phrases.

Through the reading of popular science books, I soon reached the conviction that much of the stories in the Bible could not be true.

You know, for a long time I became almost atheist. I believed in nothing. And it was tough for me to believe in anything at all because I had believed so strongly. And I divorced myself of spirituality, I think.

I grew up an Orthodox Jew, and now I'm not an Orthodox Jew. So I have sympathy for people who lose their faith.

When we learn to read, it's a real product of civilization and a civilized society. It affects your brain. It affects the way you think, and it gives you that capacity for self-reflection that you simply do not have without the agency of books.

Brought up a Presbyterian, indoctrinated from the Catechism, and being naturally of an inquiring mind, I fell a ready prey to the logic of infidelity, as soon as I began to think for myself. But that which at first threatened to be the utter shipwreck of faith in God and the Bible was, under God's providence, over-ruled for good, and merely wrecked my confidence in human creed and systems of Bible misinterpretations.

A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

Before I went to bed, I sat up till 2 a-clock in my chamber, reading of Mr. Hooke's Microscopical Observations, the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.

They are either people of faith who have lost their faith from reading my books, or they are people who had already lost their faith, and something about my books encouraged them to affirm that.

Personally, I think the 'Christian family' should be called a Christian fantasy.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.

My girlfriend has the greatest story as to why she isn't religious anymore. When she was a kid, like 12 years old, her parents nailed a 25 pound crucifix to the wall right above her bed. About two weeks later, in the middle of the night, the crucifix falls off the wall and leaves a two inch gash in the back of her dad's head.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

I think that the issues we have with science these days are not restricted to what's happening with respect to religion. There are a lot of very religious scientists around.

As time passed I became an avid reader of popular scientific books, wanting to know as much as I could about the world in which I lived. Gradually I began to see a pattern of nonsense in much scientific writing. Scientific explanations given regarding the origins or functioning of various phenomena simply didn't make sense.

Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.

When I was 11 years old and I was on a road trip with my family. I turned to my dad and said, "Do you believe in Adam and Eve?" And he said he didn't think so. I remember that felt like a slap in the face, because if my parents questioned Adam and Eve, then they potentially questioned everything within Catholicism. Eventually that idea led to my feeling liberated, but at that time it was very scary.

Any story that gets us thinking, and particularly young people, thinking why? Whether it's as a result of reading the book, or coming out of the theatre or the cinema, I think we should just simply be asking the question 'why'? Why did it happen to those people? Was it necessary? And anything that gets us thinking like that is really important.