Roger Scruton Quotes

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.

My work explores the frontier between rationalism and superstition and the wavering boundary between the two.

I had some hesitations about philosophy because, if you worked out a philosophical theory, it was hard to know whether you were going to be able to prove it or whether other theories had just as good a claim on belief.

People's faith, people's beliefs are such a personal thing, and it defies definition. I'm so rarely interested in discussing what I believe or what you believe. I think it's liquid, anyway.

In so far as I have any beliefs, I suppose I'm like that old Peggy Lee song, 'Is That All There Is?' I want to believe there's something else going on, but what that something else is I don't pretend to know.

People are scared to death and they're looking for something beyond themselves.

My dad believes in God, I think. I'm not sure if my mom does. I don't.

The most interesting character to me is someone who is stuck in the no man's land between Belief and Unbelief, Faith and Faithlessness. I'm capitalizing like a German, but it doesn't matter whether it's faith in a person or in God, or belief in science or whatever, it's the desperate in-between state that makes for interesting dramatic tension.

I often find myself on my knees praying to something or someone to not be in control.

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

I am not the opposite of theism. I am right in the middle of those non-believers and believers. It's not even about being agnostic or nastik. Why would I take a name given to me by my opposition? I am just a rationalist.

For a while, I called myself an agnostic, which was me wanting to maintain a connection to the culture I was raised in while also undercutting a lot of the beliefs I had.

The stress that some of us feel - it's a lack of faith, it really is.

No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion.

Which of these statements creates more anxiety in you: 'There is no God' or 'There is no money'?

Believe in order to Understand and Understand in order to Believe

I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything.

Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith.

The more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them.

In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.

You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one.