Religion Quotations - Quotations

Guest Author - Danielle Hollister

"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart."
-- Richard Adams
"One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success."
-- Joseph Addison
"Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit."
-- Felix Adler
"The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion."
-- Matthew Arnold
"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth man's minds about to religion."
-- Sir Francis Bacon
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men...the master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order."
-- Sir Francis Bacon
"One's religion is whatever one is most interested in."
--Sir James Matthew Barrie
"Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters."
-- Isaac Bashevis
"There is no religion higher than the truth".
-- Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky
"Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich."
-- Napolean Bonaparte
"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping the common people quiet."
-- Napolean Bonaparte
"To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely."
-- Jorge Luis Borges
"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god."
-- Jorge Luis Borges
"Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage."
-- Frederick Buechner
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton
"Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency in sin. It is just that negative species of virtue which consists in not doing what is scandalously depraved and wicked. But there is no heart of holy principle in it, any more than there is in the grosser sin."
-- Horace Bushnell
"Indeed, the Founders mentioned the pagan authors in so many heartfelt speeches, pamphlets and letters that today's sweeping references to America's "Christian" roots and "Judeo-Christian heritage" ought to be amended. Maybe these terms should be reserved to explain the traditional religions and morality of individuals, families, congregations, small communitities. Politically, our notions of virtue and vice have had another genesis."
-- Colin Campbell
"In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge."
-- Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."
-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton
"Religion is confining and imprisoning and toxic because it is based on ideology and dogma. But spirituality is redeeming and universal."
-- Deepak K. Chopra
"Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die."
-- F. Forrester Church
"Cruel persecution and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essense of religion, namely, its absolute claims."
-- Morris Raphael Cohen
"Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but--live for it."
-- Charles Caleb Colton
"All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by...religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need."
-- William Harvey Cox
"Existence, as we know it, is full of sorrow. To mention only one minor point: every man is a condemned criminal, only he does not know the date of his execution. This is unpleasant for every man. Consequently every man does everything possible to postpone the date, and would sacrifice anything that he has if he could reverse the sentence. Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by promising their adherents some such reward as immortality. No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a well-organized religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least unable to demonstrate its innocence. Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing that we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of experiment. Is there any truth at all in the claims of various religions? Let us examine the question."
-- Aleister Crowley
"Religion is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance."
-- Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
"What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life."
--
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
--
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
--
"The tendancy of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined."
-- George Eliot
"We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion."
-- T. S. Eliot
"Any religion...is for ever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion."
-- T. S. Eliot
"I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."
--
"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
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"In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity."
--
"The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide."
--
"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes."
-- James Kern Feibleman
"The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth."
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Science and religion no more contradict each other than light and electricity."
-- William Hiram Foulkes
"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessites."
-- Sigmund Freud
"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires."
-- Sigmund Freud
"Religion is not what you will get after reading all the scriptures of the world. It is not really what is grasped by the grain. It is a heart grasp."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"My friends and my road-fellows, pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. "Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress. "Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. "Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. "Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. "Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again. "Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation."
-- Kahlil Gibran
"The truly religious man does not embrace a religion; and he who embraces one has no religion."
-- Kahlil Gibran
"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separate."
-- Ulysses S. Grant
"All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world."
-- John Hay
"One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
-- Robert Anson Heinlein
"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
-- Don Hirschberg
"Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion."
-- Thomas Hobbes
"The artist needs no religion beyond his work."
-- Elbert Hubbard
"Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one."
-- Elbert Hubbard
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but now, as yet, intelligent enough."
-- Aldous Leonard Huxley
"Religion is the monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."
-- William James
"Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life."
-- William James
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Difference of opinion is helpful in religion."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"If I had to live my life over again, I would have a different father, a different wife and a different religion."
--
"People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place."
-- Irving Kristol
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
-- Dalai Lama
"Just a hurried line...to tell a story which puts the contrast between *our* feast of the Nativity and all this ghastly Xmas racket at it's lowest. My brother heard a woman on a 'bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a Crib outside it, Oh Lor'! They bring religion into everything. Look- they're dragging it even into Christmas now!"
-- Clive Staples Lewis
"The heart of religion lies in its personal pronouns."
-- Martin Luther
"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"
-- James Madison
"Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful."
-- Margaret Mead
"Just as there is a lower carelessness which means death to the soul, so there is a higher carelessness which is the supreme gift of religion. We must all at length rest back upon God."
-- W. E. Orchard
"Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substnace of all false religion in the world."
-- John Owen
"Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics."
-- Wendell Phillips
"Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science."
-- Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
"I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether."
-- Neil Postman
"All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife . Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest."
-- Beatrix Potter
"Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny."
-- George Santayana
"Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion."
-- George Santayana
"If our religion only proclaims a high standard of ethics, then our religion is a burden heavier than we can bear."
-- Rolland W. Schloerb
"In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell's ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. "What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you're wrong?" she asked. "I mean, what if--uh--when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say?" Russell was delighted with the question. His birght, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contempalated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a figner upward and cried, "Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence."
-- Al Seckel
"There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards."
-- Alan Simpson President, Vassar College
"Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters."
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
"If your religion does not make you holy, it will damn you. It is simply painted pageantry to go to hell in."
-- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation."
-- Gertrude Stein
"What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand."
-- Adlai Ewing Stevenson 24th US Vice President
"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love on another."
-- Jonathan Swift
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."
--
"Religion consists of a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain."
--
"Present your religion to a little child, set him in the midst of those who profess it. If it frightens him, and freezes the smiles on his lips, then whatever sort of religion it is, it is not Christianity."
-- Unknown
"Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men."
-- Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
"When its a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."
-- Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
"Praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion. In prayer we act like men; in praise we act like angels."
-- Thomas John Watson, Sr.
"Religion is what a person does in his solitariness."
-- Alfred North Whitehead
"Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief."
-- Ocsar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
"Said Waldershare, "Sensible men are all of the same religion." And pray what is that?" ... "Sensible men never tell."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
"To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language."
-- George Santayana
"Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother."
-- Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

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