Clear views and certain," Mr. Thomas Hardy once wrote of his own agnos — Agnosticism

"One should not have the arrogance to declare that God does not exist."

"As a matter of fact agnosticism is a theory of knowledge: it is defined as that theory of knowledge which ends in doubt, or disbelief of some or all of the powers of knowing possessed by the human mind. In a word, it is the opposite to gnosticism. Gnosticism attributed to the human mind a greater power of knowing than it actually possessed. Agnosticism denies to the human mind a power of attaining knowledge which it does possess. It is important to remember that agnosticism, as such, is a theory about knowledge and not about religion. This fact is frequently overlooked and the probe of empiric test confined illegitimately to the sphere of religious knowledge."

"Each person, then, is subject to two quite different requirements in connection with any proposition he considers: (1) he should try his best to bring it about that if that proposition is true then he believe it; and (2) he should try his best to bring it about that if that proposition is false then he not believe it. Each requirement by itself would be quite simple: to fulfill the first, our purely intellectual being could simply believe every proposition that comes along; to fulfill the second, he could refrain from believing any proposition that comes along. To fulfill both is more difficult. If he had only the second requirement—that of trying his best to bring it about that if a proposition is false then he not believe that proposition—then he could always play it safe and never act at all, doxastically. But sometimes more than just playing it safe is necessary if he is also to fulfill the first requirement: that of trying his best, with respect to the propositions he considers, to believe the ones that are true."

"I say that I am an agnostic. People think thats pusillanimous and covering your bets. But its not based on any belief or yearning for an afterlife but on the fact that we actually know so little about the cosmos. It is a tribute to the complexity and, at our present stage of development, the unknowability of the universe."

"Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands."

"Idealism in philosophy is a defence, sometimes extremely elaborate, sometimes less so, of clericalism, of a doctrine that places faith above science, or side by side with science, or in some way or another gives faith a place. Agnosticism (from the Greek words “a” no and “gnosis” knowledge) is vacillation between materialism and idealism, i.e., in practice it is vacillation between materialist science and clericalism."