David Berlinski Quotes

Religion and philosophy have their value, but in the end all we can do is open to mystery and live a path with heart

When we suffer, there will sometimes be mystery... Will there also be faith?

I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I'm not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I'm not a scientist.

There is obviously a great human need for religion because life seems to be such a mystery.

People don't so much believe in God as that they choose not to believe in nothing.

Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.

I believe in mystery and, frankly, I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. In other words, I think that there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate, and that also we experience some of the most beautiful things in life only in a very primitive form. Only in relation to these mysteries do I consider myself to be a religious man.

I'm very religious, you know. Now, OK, if by 'religious', you mean that I go to church every Sunday, read the bible faithfully, and I listen to Debbie Boone, umm, I'm not religious in that sense... But if by 'religious' you mean that I love others and try to help them whenever possible... Again, no. But if by 'religious' you mean that I like to eat coleslaw... Yeah, OK, OK!

Religion is the one and sole interest of the people of India.

... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.

I was raised a Catholic as a boy and went to a Catholic boys' high school, a private school, and kind of drifted away, candidly, in my latter teen years. I consider myself deeply spiritual but not in an institutional, religious kind of a way. In Catholicism, we're surrounded by these images of martyrdom and doing penance and doing some suffering to achieve what you're trying to achieve. And I certainly embedded that in my psyche and I have lived that very effectively.

To commit suicide is easy. To live without a god is more difficult. The drunkenness of triumph is greater than the drunkenness of sacrifice.

To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God.

Whenever I hear somebody go, "I feel so religious right now!" I'm like, "Well, you're tying yourself up in knots, are you?" There's no spiritual connotation to that word whatsoever. And while it binds you to a rope, because it's about belonging, it alienates you to others. That can't be part of God's plan, if there is a God.

Everyone seems to be searching and yearning for answers whatever they may be. And that ends up being some kind of spiritual or religious belief.

Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.

I love the idea of God, but it's not stylistically in keeping with the way I function. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God. I can see that people who believe in God are happier. ... But I doubt.

I'm a fairly religious person, so I believe in some things that sound a little crazy I'm sure, depending on where you're standing. I believe in leaving room for things that you can't explain in the universe, and you don't have to be religious to leave room for those things.

Faith is a principle which hath its root deeper feeling. We believe, whether we see or not.

Trials can be hard, if you don't know God.

I come from a very religious background.And actually I remained in it. All my anger I describe in my quarrels with God in Auschwitz, but you know I used to pray every day.

I think of myself as a highly spiritual person, but without - I was never really given a religion or a religious experience or a community to sort of subscribe to.

We got to pray just to make it today.