William "Blake could do so many things. Why is it that he could do none of them quite right?"

G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 # 3 (December 2001)

"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?"

Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Paine, date unknown, according to The Patriot Post Founders’ Quote Daily March 24, 2008 from Federalist.com

"I would not want to make you unhappy by detailing pain, but there is a crucial sort of difference between pain and the narration of pain. I am telling you what happened. If there is vicarious pain in knowing, there is actual peril in not knowing. In aversion lies a colossal risk."

Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

"Vestigial remains of that Victorianism are everywhere around us. And memories of them persist even when the realities are gone, rather like an amputated limb that still seems to throb when the weather is bad. The sense of values lost may be as palpable as the values we do have."

Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-moralization of Society

"All our doing must take place within the context of Being, with its mystery present and alive to us. Otherwise we are simply scurrying around aimlessly in the mazes of our own contrivance."

William Barrett The Illusion of Technique

"Many persons in these days wish to retain the morality which they like, after getting rid of the religion which they disbelieve. Whether they are right or wrong in disturbing the foundation, they are inconsistent in wishing to save the superstructure."

James Fitzjames Stephen in Liberty Equality Fraternity

"Faith is, indeed, most necessary in human affairs, as well as in religion. Without faith, no contracts could be concluded, nor could any business be transacted."

John of Salisbury in Metalogicon (1159), quoted in William L. Sachse English History in the Making

"I never, as it happens, come across a hospital or orphanage run by the Fabian Society or a Humanist leper colony."

Malcolm Muggeridge Observer (1968) in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge