Lionel Blue Quotes

What would I have done if I’d been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I hardly knew? Probably, I would have looked the other way at best or become another apologist for evil at worst.

To change, to convert? Why bother?

This Christian poison hasn’t stopped yet.

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge.

The real evidence is not practically speaking in scholarship but in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practising Christians. Their lives are the proofs of their beliefs.

The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity is in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practicing Christians.

The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me.

Someone gave me a New Testament. I had never before read it systematically. Some parts made sense, some parts shocked me.

Some of the parables of the Kingdom made wonderful sense, but the exclusivity in the New Testament put me off.

So many plusses, so many minuses.

Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.

Pious XII was too neutral to mention the gas chambers; decent people like my own family were turned into devils by crude Christianity.

On the way to work good-hearted young girls sometimes offer me their seats, which I accept and bless them in return, a transaction satisfying to all concerned.

My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston.

My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I’ve begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I’ve had it good and am crumbling nicely.

It’s more fun to watch without joining in.

It was admitted by the early rabbis that the sectarians could be as full of good works as eggs were full of meat.

It is not possible to unknow what you do know – the result of that is fanaticism.

In speaking of Jesus, I must speak about Christianity because I do not think it possible or profitable to divide the two.