When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.
This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Émile Cammaerts' book The Laughing Prophet : The Seven Virtues and G. K. Chesterton (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as having Father Brown say, in "The Oracle of the Dog" (1923): "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense." Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: "'It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'" Note that the remark about believing in anything is outside the quotation marks — it is Cammaerts. The correct attribution was reportedly first traced by Pasquale Accardo. http://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/ It was also credited to Nigel Rees (as cited in First Things, 1997). http://books.google.com/books?id=NuQnAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+first+effect+of+not+believing+in+God+is+to+believe+in+anything%22&dq=%22The+first+effect+of+not+believing+in+God+is+to+believe+in+anything%22&hl=en&ei=PSzcTvewIefx0gHqmrj0DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ
Misattributed
„Viera je azyl pre ľudí, ktorí už ničomu neveria.“
„Ľudia sú veľmi skeptickí – neveria ničomu s výnimkou ohovárania.“
„Ak ľudia stratia vieru v Boha, neurobí ich to veriacimi v nič, naopak, začnú veriť čomukoľvek.“
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„Veriť v Boha znamená vedieť, že život má zmysel.“
„Pravda sa nezmení len preto, či jej verí alebo neverí väčšina ľudí.“
„Pre ľudí je prirodzené veriť v niečo. Ja verím v seba samého.“
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