Charles Bradlaugh Quotes

I do not deny God, because that word conveys to me no idea, and I cannot deny that which presents to me no distinct affirmation, and of which the would-be affirmer has no conception. I cannot war with a nonentity. If, however, God is affirmed to represent an existence which is distinct from the existence of which I am a mode, and which it is alleged is not the noumenon of which the word I represents only a speciality of phenomena, then I deny God, and affirm that it is impossible God can be.

I know not what you mean by God; the word God is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.

The atheist does not say ‘there is no God,’ but he says ‘I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God’; the word ‘God’ is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. … The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.

God is a spirit. Jesus was led up of the Spirit to be tempted of the Devil; and it is also true that spirits are very likely to lead men to the Devil. Too intimate acquaintance with whisky toddy overnight is often followed by the delirium tremens and blue-devils on the morrow. We advise our readers to eschew alike spirituous and spiritual mixtures. They interfere sadly with sober thinking, and play the Devil with your brains.

The word heretic ought to be a term of honour.

Idle and meaningless … a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have reverently made.

Probably they had good reason for omitting it. A profane mind might make a jest of an apostle half seas over, and ridicule an apostolic gate-keeper who couldn’t keep his head above water.

No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is long and – like the glacier march – is perceptible only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods.

Atheist, without God, I look to humankind for sympathy, for love, for hope, for effort, for aid.

There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion.

If when I am libelled I take no notice, the world believes the libel. If I sue, I have to pay about one hundred pounds’ costs for the privilege, and gain the smallest coin the country knows for recompense.

Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them?