No Other Religion Quotes & Sayings

The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. But since religion has been made into a trade, the practical part has been made to consist of ceremonies performed by men called priests ... By devices of this kind true religion has been banished, and such means have been found out to extract money, even from the pockets of the poor, instead of contributing to their relief. — Thomas Paine

Men talk of heaven, - there is no heaven but here;
Men talk of hell, - there is no hell but here;
Men of hereafters talk and future lives, -
O love, there is no other life - but here. — Omar Khayyam

For me there has been no serious difficulty in reconciling the principles of true science with the principles of true religion, for both are concerned with the eternal verities of the universe.
Believe everything scholars can strictly prove and suit yourself about the rest.
Science has nothing to say one way or the other about whether there is a spirit ... The evidence lies outside of our present scientific knowledge. — Henry B. Eyring

Every day the words that Keep-on-Dancin' and the Gypsy imparted to me - theories, observations, advice and warnings - are substantiated and acquire deeper meaning.

'It's not for nothing there are so many bistrots in Paris,' Keep-on-Dancin' asserted. 'The reason so many people are always crowded into them isn't so much they go there to drink but to meet up, congregate, come together, comfort each other. Yes, comfort each other: people are bored the whole time, and they're scared, scared of loneliness and boredom. And they all carry around in their heart of hearts their own pet little arch-fear: fear of death, no matter how devil-may-care they might appear to be. They'd do anything to avoid thinking about it. Don't forget, it's with that fear all temples and churches were built. So in cities like this, where forty different races mingle together, everyone can always find something to say to each other. — Jacques Yonnet

The fact is, that for the Huichol, and for all those who refuse, who are in flight, words and things are precisely what language does not speak about. Language is a natural act which implies belonging. He who exists, speaks. He who does not speak, does not exist. He has no place in the world. The Huichol language is Huichol to the same degree as the Huichol earth, the Huichol sky, religion, tattooing, dress, the peyoteros' hat. It is not enough to pronounce the syllables of the Huichol language to be Huichol. That is obvious. — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

All Egypt is obsessed with death! And do you know why, Renisenb? Because we have eyes in our bodies, but none in our minds. We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation of what we know. We have no real belief in a God. — Agatha Christie

Academic historians of the last hundred years or so get all stiff and tweedy when you suggest that people will go to all ends for the sake of their religion. They'll assure you that religion is just a cover for other, more "rational" motivations. They would prefer to explain the world in terms of economic self-interest, of class warfare, or of dynastic imperatives. But has not the early twenty-first century made it catastrophically clear how many people (and not just the desperate, either) are ready to leap over the brink in the name of their religion? The same was certainly true of "the age of discovery." While greed should certainly be given her due, there is no reason to think that da Gama was not perfectly sincere when he said that he came in search of Christians and spices. — Michael Krondl

The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible.
The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have ...
Now what is the basis of Buddhism?
If you study carefully, you will see that Buddhism is based on reason.
There is an element of flexibility inherent in it, which is not found in any other religion. — B.R. Ambedkar

When the Bible is understood in its literary and historical context; errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies pose no threat to spirituality, whether that spirituality is theistic, non-theistic, or even explicitly Jesus-centered. The graver threat to what Christians call godliness may be fundamentalism - religion that flows from literalism and fear, religion based on anachronism and law. Fundamentalism teachers, in effect, that the tattered musings of our ancestors, those human words that so poorly represent the content of human thinking, somehow adequately describe God. Fundamentalism offers identity, security, and simplicity, but at a price: by binding believers to the moral imitations and cultural trappings of the Ancients, it precludes a deeper embrace of goodness, love, and truth - in other words, of Divinity. — Valerie Tarico

No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy. — James Madison

The essence of all religions is love, compassion and tolerance. Kindness is my true religion. No matter whether you are learned or not, whether you believe in the next life or not, whether you believe in God or Buddha or some other religion or not, in day-to-day life you must be a kind person. — Dalai Lama

I have no religion, but I can't escape being extremely Jewish ethnically - that is, culturally. In other words, I'm not religious, but I worry and I'm neurotic. And I'm very good with money. — Sarah Silverman

The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. — C.S. Lewis

In order to indoctrinate their followers and secure obedience, religions frequently tear people down, creating an emptiness that must then be filled with Jesus, Allah or any other deity. People are told that they are inherently bad or sinful and that the only way to become good is by giving over control of their lives to faith. As there is no evidence that any of that is true, religion, in effect, is creating an imaginary problem simply so that it can sell an imaginary solution. — Armin Navabi

If an Elder shall give us a lecture upon astronomy, chemistry, or geology, our religion embraces it all. It matters not what the subject be, if it tends to improve the mind, exalt the feelings, and enlarge the capacity. The truth that is in all the arts and sciences forms part of our religion. Faith is no more a part of it than any other true principle of philosophy. — Brigham Young

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself.
There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life. — George H. Smith

Even greater shifts will be needed if we are to finally understand that we cannot continue to live on this planet as if it is nothing more than a collection of resources for us to exploit. A greater shift will be needed if we are to realize that no one religious tradition can lay claim to absolute "truth" and we must instead learn from each other in a mutually enhancing quest for conscious contact with the Sacred. — Albert J. LaChance

Every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person's faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance. When a crime is committed by a Christian, do they mention his religion? ... When a crime is committed by a black man, it's mentioned in the first breath: 'An African American man was arrested today ... ' But what about German Americans? Anglo Americans? A white man robs a convenience store and do we hear he's of Scottish descent? In no other instance is the ancestry mentioned. — Dave Eggers

HANNAH: You had a vision.
PRIOR: A vision. Thank you, Maria Ouspenskaya. I'm not so far gone I can be assuaged by pity and lies.
HANNAH: I don't have pity. It's just not something I have.
(Little pause)
One hundred and seventy years ago, which is recent, an angel of God appeared to Joseph Smith in upstate
New York, not far from here. People have visions.
PRIOR: But that's preposterous, that's ...
HANNAH: It's not polite to call other people's beliefs preposterous.
He had great need of understanding. Our Prophet. His desire made prayer. His prayer made an angel. The angel was real. I believe that.
PRIOR: I don't. And I'm sorry but it's repellent to me. So much of what you believe.
HANNAH: What do I believe?
PRIOR: I'm a homosexual. With AIDS. I can just imagine what you ...
HANNAH: No you can't. Imagine. The things in my head.
You don't make assumptions about me, mister; I won't make them about you. — Tony Kushner

Jesus' throat hurt to speak. "I see you are disguising yourself in more humble appearance these days. Afraid of something?" "The jester from Galilee. I am impressed you can maintain your wits after so many days in my little home away from home." Belial spread his hands out, gesturing to the dry deadly expanse around them. "I will admit that the advance of civilization has made it somewhat disadvantageous for the Watchers to reveal our true nature or presence. Yes, we are working more behind the veil than we did in primeval days. On the other hand, the way things are going, I can foresee an age when humanity has turned religion into pretty fictions, and blinded themselves to our reality. Imagine the influence we will then have on ignorant fools who no longer believe in us. — Brian Godawa

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. — John F. Kennedy

Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be "scriptural." I could select Sartre's "Existentialism and Humanism" off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his "word" at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits. — Michael Vito Tosto

Religion could never be made compatible with science without diluting it so seriously that it was no longer religion but a humanist philosophy. And so I learned what other opponents of creationism could have told me: that persuading Americans to accept the truth of evolution involved not just an education in facts, but a de-education in faith - the form of belief that replaces the need for evidence with simple emotional commitment. — Jerry A. Coyne

In other words, an entire new world is pointed to, by this. The name for it is neither art, for it has no form, nor religion. What is it? I have pondered this pin unceasingly, yet cannot fathom it. We evidently lack the work for an object like this. So you are right, Robert. It is authentically a new thing on the face of the world — Philip K. Dick

No other religion has a God who serves His people rather than demanding service of them. This is why for Martin Luther justification was the chief article of the faith. Christ turned over our human expectations so that His glorious grace might be our faith and confession. God destroys our acquisitive holiness by giving us a perfect ransom that we cannot acquire. This ransom frees us from constantly seeking to put ourselves on top. We are free to be last, because Christ exalts us. — Scott Murray

How beautiful, then, the marriage of two Christians, two who are one in home, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice ... Nothing divides them either in flesh or in spirit ... They pray together, they worship together, they fast together; instructing one another, encouraging one another, strengthening one another. Side by side they visit God's church and partake God's banquet, side by side they face difficulties and persecution, share their consolations. They have no secrets from one another; they never shun each other's company; they never bring sorrow to each other's hearts ... Seeing this Christ rejoices. To such as these He gives His peace. Where there are two together, there also He is present. — Tertullian

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. — Thomas Jefferson

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 necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. — Sigmund Freud

All theology is a doomed but necessary attempt to express the inexpressible. God is the elusive mystery we try to capture and convey in language, but how can that ever be done? If the word water is not itself drinkable, how can the words we use to express the mystery of God be themselves absolute? They are metaphors, analogies, figures of speech, yet religious people have slaughtered and condemned each other over these experimental uncertainties. Our glory and agony as humans is that we long to find words that will no longer be words, mere signifiers, but the very experience they are trying to signify; and our tragedy is that we never succeed. This is the anguish that lies at the heart of all religion, because, though our words can describe our thirst for the absolute, they can never satisfy it. — Richard Holloway

The real purpose of religion - at the popular level - was to unify the populace. Let everyone worship his favorite god in some niche or other, but let's all sacrifice at the same altar, climb the same steps, and wander through the same colonnades. Let the Jews have their god, by all means - who's stopping them? - and let us all have ours. And no provincial exclusiveness, please. — Thomas Cahill

If we are going to be ready for Jesus Christ, we have to stop being religious. In other words, we must stop using religion as if it were some kind of a lofty lifestyle - we must be spiritually real. If you are avoiding the call of the religious thinking of today's world, and instead are "looking unto Jesus" (Hebrews 12:2), setting your heart on what He wants, and thinking His thoughts, you will be considered impractical and a daydreamer. But when He suddenly appears in the work of the heat of the day, you will be the only one who is ready. You should trust no one, and even ignore the finest saint on earth if he blocks your sight of Jesus Christ. — Oswald Chambers

Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unit of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas, and constantly changing scenes. — Edward S. Jordan

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way. — C.S. Lewis

Our cultures used to be almost hereditary, but now we choose them from a menu as various as the food court of a suburban shopping mall. Ambition, curiosity, talent, sexuality or religion can draw us to new cities and cultures, where we become foreigners to our parents. Synthetic cultures are nimbler than old ones, often imprudently so. They have scattered so widely that they can no longer hear each other and now some have gone so far afield that they have passed through the apocalypse while the rest of us are watching it on TV. — Neal Stephenson

Some days my mantra was I will stay in this marriage because I am a Christian and Christians stay, but other days, I thought: if the choices are Christianity or divorce then I will just have to embrace secular humanism because I am not even sure I believe any of this anymore and it is one thing to devote twenty minutes every morning to praying when you are not sure you believe anything anymore and it is another thing to organize your whole life around a marriage you don't want to be in because a God who may or may not exist says let no man put asunder. — Lauren F. Winner

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. — Ayn Rand

In the Christian religion, though perhaps not in any other, we frequently find a conception of god that is selfcontradictory and therefore corresponds to nothing. That is the conception formed by the following three propositions taken together:
1. God is all-powerful.
2. God is all-benevolent.
3. There is much misery in the world.
A god who was all-powerful but left much misery in the world would not be all-benevolent. An all-benevolent god in a world containing much misery would not be an all-powerful god. A world containing a god who was both all-powerful and all-benevolent would contain no misery.
Here, then, we have a mathematical proof bearing on a common religious doctrine. Anyone who is confident that he frequently comes across misery in the world may conclude with equal confidence that there is no such thing as an all-powerful and all-benevolent god. And this mathematically disposes of official Christianity, as has long been known. — Richard Robinson

An important contribution to a much-neglected but very important subject. No other author has set out to do what Davenport accomplishes, which is a systematic study of how key representatives of America's rising tide of religion attempted a theoretical understanding of, and practical response to, America's rising tide of commerce. — Mark Noll

I'm a fan of Bill Hicks. He did things that no other stand up did at the time. He was making fun of religion, at that time it was a lot harder to say those things in the States than it was here. To slag off Christianity and fundamentalist Christians, and to be pro drugs and anti gun in the deep south, that's a big ask. And he did that and made it funny. Bill Hicks was able to say things that he really thought, and he managed to make those thoughts funny without a care if it antagonised people. — Ed Byrne

What sort of man is this, who over and over again, gave numerous details about His death, months before it occurred, and added to each such utterance that on the third day after His decease He would rise again from the dead - and DID RISE, as even the city of Jerusalem soon came to believe? No other founder of a great world religion (or a small one) ever made such statements, or ever came forth from the dead. — Wilbur Moorehead Smith

The United States of America is logically the least magical place in the world. Planned by committee, not even a country, just a legal umbrella for fifty associated provinces, an elaborate polling system for creating other larger and more permanent committees. No mysteries; no demons; one God at the most. Sure, it had its own folklore and tall tales, but it wasn't the same. Its rulers weren't descended from men and women who spoke with birds and rode dragons. Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan were hayseeds, folksy also-rans compared to the madness in the ancient royal blood going back to the Druids, to Byzantium, to Mithraic cults. — Austin Grossman

An act of terrorism
is not an ideology,
nor religion.
It is the lack of hope,
of opportunity
and of love.
When there is no recourse,
no other way
there is only insurrection.
Understanding, compassion
and respect for all life
is what will save us all. — Mahima Martel

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
[West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)] — Robert H. Jackson

There's practically no religion that I know of that sees other people in a way that affirms the others' choices. But in our century we're forced to think about a pluralistic world. — Elaine Pagels

For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power. — Thomas Hobbes

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due. — Pierre Bayle

1.If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion. — Osho

It was this same Jesus, the Christ who, among many other remarkable things, said and repeated something which, proceeding from any other being would have condemned him at once as either a bloated egotist or a dangerously unbalanced person ... when He said He himself would rise again from the dead, the third day after He was crucified, He said something that only a fool would dare say, if he expected longer the devotion of any disciples-unless He was sure He was going to rise. No founder of any world religion known to men ever dared say a thing like that! — Wilbur Smith

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion; the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe. — Marilynne Robinson

I'd always thought of myself as an open-minded person. I had no patience with anyone who put down other kids because of their race, religion, or sexuality. But that's just one kind of open-mindedness. There's another kind, too, the kind that's willing to see people for who they really are and admit when you were wrong about them. That's the part I still need to work on. — Kelley Armstrong

Are science and religion converging? No. There are modern scientists whose words sound religious but whose beliefs, on close examination, turn out to be identical to those of other scientists who straightforwardly call themselves atheists. — Richard Dawkins

In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely. — Nathan Myhrvold

The Average Occidental- be he a democrat or a Fascist, a Capitalist or a Bolshevik, a manual worker or an intellectual- knows only one positive "religion", and that is the worship of material progress, the belief that there is no other goal in life than to make that very life continually easier or, as the current expression goes, "independent of nature". The temples of this "religion" are the gigantic factories, cinemas, chemical laboratories, dancing halls, hydro- electric works; and its priests are bankers, engineers,film stars, captains of industry, record-airmen. The unavoidable result of this craving after power and pleasure is the creation of hostile groups armed to the teeth and determined to destroy each other whenever their respective interests come to clash. And on the cultural side the result is the creation of a human type whose morality is confined to the question of practical utility alone, and whose highest criterion of good and evil is material progress. — Muhammad Asad

There is plenty of other evidence, however, that the nominal conversion of the Roman Empire to the Christian religion had effected no visible improvement in the common morals. The world was worse rather than better. Out of its besetting temptations men fled to save their souls. They fled from the world, which in the first century was believed by the Christians to be doomed, and liable to be destroyed by divine fire before the end of the year, and which in the fourth century was believed by the Christians to be damned: it belonged to the devil. They fled also from the church, which they accused of secularity and of hypocrisy. Many of the monks were laymen, who in deep disgust had forsaken the services and sacraments. They said their own prayers and sought God in their own way, asking no aid from priests. They were men who had resolved never to go to church again. — George Hodges

There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion. — Ernest Hemingway,

But we [writers] are crucial. That is what I hope you have learned. We listen for and collect and share stories. Without stories there is no nation and no religion and no culture. Without stories of bone and substance and comedy there is only a river of lies, and sweet and delicious ones they are, too. We are the gatherers, the shepherds, the farmers of stories. We wander widely and look for them and gather them and harvest them and share them as food. It is a craft as necessary and nutritious as any other, and if you are going to be good at it you must double your humility and triple your curiosity and quadruple your ability to listen. — Brian Doyle

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void. — Terence McKenna

It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. — David Levithan

With regards pedophilia I have always looked on it as that ... pedophilia. I thought that one religion is no different to the other and I am now truthfully beginning to think that. — Stephen Richards

We have regressed to the times of the wars of religion; divided, betrayed, threatened if we do not think as the others think or if we refuse to use the same formulas and cry the same watchwords. And tomorrow, ready to kill each other in the name of free will. Refusing to consider the realities he finds disagreeable, each adversary blinds himself with his own convictions and no longer considers those that might help him to comprehend the problem. — Jules Roy

We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution
it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad
peace be upon Him!
tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be. — Zadie Smith

I have no other religion than kindness. — Debasish Mridha

If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan ... it cannot be a true religion. — Shusaku Endo

Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is "underneath" rather than "above" everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside. One might say that if religion is the opium of the people, the Hindus have the inside dope. What is more, no Hindu can realize that he is God in disguise without seeing at the same time that this is true of everyone and everything else. In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself. — Alan W. Watts

Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated. — John Locke

True piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to our children; and that it is our duty, not to lead religion whither we would, but rather to follow religion whither it leads; and that it is the part of Christian modesty and gravity not to hand down our own beliefs or observances to those who come after us, but to preserve and keep what we have received from those who went before us. — Vincent Of Lerins

The man or woman who enjoys the spirit of our religion has no trials; but the man or woman who tries to live according to the gospel of the Son of God, and at the same times clings to the spirit of the world, has trials and sorrows acute and keen, and that too, continually. This is the deciding point, the dividing line. They who love and serve God with all their hearts rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks; but they who try to serve God and still cling to the spirit of the world have got on two yokes
the yoke of Jesus and the yoke of the devil, and they will have plenty to do. They will have a warfare inside and outside, and the labor will be very galling, for they are directly in opposition one to the other. — Brigham Young

When the two men sat down to supper, Jan Myers cracked some of his favorite jokes about the clergy and their dogma. Though Zeno remembered that he used to find such pleasantries amusing, they seemed rather flat to him now; nevertheless...he said to himself that at a time when religion was leading to savagery, the rudimentary skepticism of this good fellow certainly had its value. For himself, however, being more advanced in methods of negating assumptions, at first, in order to see if thereafter something positive can be reaffirmed, and of breaking down a whole in order to watch the parts recompose themselves on another plane or in some other fashion, he no longer felt able to laugh at those easy jests. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I see no light behind that terrible curtain. I do not think one religion better than another and I think the Christian religion has brought far more misery crime and suffering far more tyranny and evil than any other. — Eliza Lynn Linton

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. — Saul D. Alinsky

A critic may reject some miracle stories as legendary, and not others, with no inconsistency at all for the simple reason that even if one holds miracles to be possible, one need not hold legends to be impossible! There are other factors, literary and historiographical ones, that might lead a critic to conclude that even though miracles can happen, it does not appear that in this or that case they did. — Robert M. Price

My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths — Moses Mendelssohn

I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat — George Bernard Shaw

No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, color, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person - only his abilities. — Milton Friedman

Let us suppose that such a person began by observing those Christian activities which are, in a sense, directed towards this present world. He would find that this religion had, as a mere matter of historical fact, been the agent which preserved such secular civilization as survived the fall of the Roman Empire; that to it Europe owes the salvation, in those perilous ages, of civilized agriculture, architecture, laws, and literacy itself. He would find that this same religion has always been healing the sick and caring for the poor; that it has, more than any other, blessed marriage; and that arts and philosophy tend to flourish in its neighborhood. In a word, it is always either doing, or at least repenting with shame for not having done, all the things which secular humanitarianism enjoins. If our enquirer stopped at this point he would have no difficulty in classifying Christianity - giving it its place on a map of the 'great religions. — C.S. Lewis

Irrespective of caste, gender and religion people who slaughter women in the name of female foeticide, dowry, abuse have no rights to speak on cow slaughter. One is the mother, the other is a daughter. This Dusserah may the Durgatinashini bless us all with the enlightenment of humanity. Happy Dusserah! — Debajani Mohanty

Many say that it is ethnocentric to claim that our religion is superior to others. Yet isn't that very statement ethnocentric? Most non-Western cultures have no problem saying that their culture and religion is best. The idea that it is wrong to do so is deeply rooted in Western traditions of self-criticism and individualism. To charge others with the "sin" of ethnocentrism is really a way of saying, "Our culture's approach to other cultures is superior to yours. — Timothy J. Keller

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within ... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, "the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad — Huston Smith

If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer." This — William Somerset Maugham

How, for example, after liberating themselves from servitude to the religion of God, the creator of the world and of Adam, which alone could hold them within duty and, therefore, within society, did the impious life of those first men from whom the gentile nations arose bring them to disperse in a ferine wandering through the great forest of the earth, grown dense through saturation by the waters of the Flood? And how, constrained to seek food and water and, even more, to save themselves from the wild animals in which the great forest must unfortunately have abounded, with men frequently abandoning their women and mothers their children, and with no way of reuniting, did their descendants gradually come to forget the language of Adam and, without language or any thought other than that of satisfying their hunger, thirst and the foment of their lust, deaden all sense of humanity? — Giambattista Vico

I've never attended a Quaker service before." "We believe that true religion is a personal encounter with God rather than a matter of ritual and ceremony, and that all aspects of life are sacramental. Therefore, no one day or place or activity is any more spiritual than any other. But we gather together at such times to discover in stillness a deeper sense of God's presence. — C.S. Harris

I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love ... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion ... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it ... — Pierre Abelard

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live. — Mark Twain

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle. — Thomas Jefferson

Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure. — The Harvard Lampoon

There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva). — Immanuel Kant

The discovery of this reality is hindered rather than helped by belief, whether one believes in God or believes in atheism. We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. — Alan W. Watts

I'm an atheist .I was raised in British reform Judaism, which is not like American reform Judaism, much less any other strain of organised religion. So: no cults here. — Charles Stross

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books [the Bible], they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. When it is said, as in the Testament, 'If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,' it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel. — Thomas Paine

No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become distinguished from other aspects of life: it's still embedded in religion, magic and social ceremonies. — Northrop Frye

Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it
and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. — Osho

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. — Booker T. Washington

Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other. — Edwin Gaustad

Here the four elements of solidity, fluidity, heat and motion have no place; the notions of length and breadth, the subtle and the gross, good and evil, name and form are altogether destroyed; neither this world nor the other, nor coming, going or standing, neither death nor birth, nor sense-objects are to be found. — Walpola Rahula

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

At such times, the heart of man turns instictively towards his Maker. In prosperity, and whenever there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him, then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm. — Solomon Northup

I cannot believe that any religion has been revealed to Man by God. Because a revealed religion would be perfect but no known religion is perfect; and because history and science show us that known religions have not been revealed but have been evolved from other traditions. — Robert Blatchford

A man actually has two Gods. The one, created him and the other, he created. Nature is not the first God but the first God exists in and as a part of the nature; a man with the help his reason creates a God against the forces of nature that are perceived to be as threat, hence the second God. The second God is the property of an individual mind that created it. A child has no reason and hence it has no second God; but it has the first God not yet known to it because the fear is not felt by the child! The first God is felt and known due to the fear ingrained in the instinct and the second God is the surrender and prayer brought out by the reason! — Thiruman Archunan

There is absolutely no difference between religion and politics at all in Jesus' time. In other words, every seemingly religious word that came out of Jesus' mouth had very clear and unmistakable political connotations to it. — Reza Aslan

No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to arrive at maturity. — Arthur Schopenhauer