. . . there is only one authority. . . that is the authority which truth itself possesses when it is perceived to be true by the individual concerned. . . the alternative procedure, the delegation to external authority, must itself follow an individual’s subjective decision.

I reject unchecked subjectivism as the authority in religion. No one can suppose that the final authority in religion is what the individual happens to think is true, unless his decision is preceded by long meditation, the weighing of all the available evidence and prayer for guidance.

Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research -- neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction.

Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

I avow myself the partisan of truth alone.

Truth can prevail only in virtue of truth itself.

In view of all the foregoing reasons, I cannot but think the case conclusive, that neither form of the Doctrine of Authority can be maintained. We should abandon, as consistent thinkers, and still more as consistent Christians, the imperative authority both of Church Tradition and of Scripture. There is nothing left, then, but the Doctrine of Reason — the Method of Conviction as the only real method of determining religious belief and practice, resting on the use of the human rational powers taken in their entire compass.

When I really believe a thing, I mean that its truth possesses me. . . Truth is self-authenticating, and when it possesses me, nothing can shake it from its enthronement until some greater truth displaces it or gives it less prominence.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth.

The point is that his authority would be derived in the only way that such authority ever is — by making claims about the world that can be corroborated by further observation

I am saying that truth may certainly be true whatever my opinion may be, but it has no authority with me until I perceive it to be true.