Quotes & Sayings About Religion

I want here to make three suggestions: first, that the doubts the ordinary man feels about religion are justified, and need not be stifled or concealed; second, that there is no ground for the view that Christianity is the only alternative to communism, or that there can be no sound character training that is not based on religion; and, third, I want to make some practical suggestions to the parents who are not believers, on what they should tell the children about God, and what sort of moral training they should give them. — Margaret E. Knight

The word of God is full of assurance. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion. — John Amos Comenius

Seen through the eyes of faith, religion's future is secure. As long as there are human beings, there will be religion for the sufficient reason that the self is a theomorphic creature - one whose morphe (form) is theos - God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts. Since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them. — Huston Smith

I was young and beginning to study the Bible for myself and, in the process, came to believe that I held a volatile document in my hands-one that had the potential to destroy all religion from the inside out. — Bruxy Cavey

Soul (Atma) remains very far from where kashays (anger-pride-deceit-greed) are created, the Soul is quite far from there. Where there is absence of kashays, there lies the 'religion of Vitrags (the enlightened ones)', and where kashays are present, lies the 'relative religion'! — Dada Bhagwan

In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs. — Alexandre Dumas

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness. — Alfred North Whitehead

I grew up with no religion and she had all religion. She celebrates everything and I celebrate nothing. — Caroline Kepnes

Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

For an academic to launch a public conversation about journalistic integrity, the role of religion in society, scholarship and faith is a dream come true. These are the kinds of things that we sit around talking to each other about in our dusty libraries. To see these conversations take place in popular culture is the best thing that could have ever happened. — Reza Aslan

Art, science, philosophy, religion
each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience. — Edward Abbey

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I don't make any pretence of knowing about the existence of a Supreme Entity, neither do I make any attempt to create any friction among religions. If anything, I have spared myself no pains in my endeavor to smoothen the ongoing friction among all religions of the world. — Abhijit Naskar

I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize the continuity between the immanence of God in our world and eternity. Rather than simply waiting to be liberated to another time or place, we are being invited to collaborate in the healing and redemption of our world. — Mark Scandrette

That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater Respect among the common People. — Benjamin Franklin

In the process of replacing the old religions, Christianity became a religion. — Alexander Schmemann

I'm not sure that religion was constructed with time travelers in mind." Buck's brows rose at that. "Constructed?" he echoed, surprised. "Who builds God? — Diana Gabaldon

How women view religion's role in society is shaped more by their own country's culture and context than one monolithic view that religion is simply bad for women. — Dalia Mogahed

I am seeing life in two dimensions; human and divine. — Lailah Gifty Akita

And we must - absolutely must - maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God. — Richard Rohr

For me, the existence of nonexistence of God is a nonissue. — Greg Graffin

While religion is ethical, it by no means follows that ethics is religion. — Georgia Harkness

For myself I couldn't care less, but I have a lover. Not a partner, Susannah, or a friend or a significant euphemism, but the love of my life. And he believes. And I've watched him tie himself in knots, as he struggles to find a place for himself in texts that were written thousands of years ago, with the deliberate aim of excluding him. — Michael Arditti

God will fulfil His promise. Wait patiently for God to act. — Lailah Gifty Akita

False religion may prevail, iniquity may abound, the love of many may wax cold, the cross of Calvary may be lost sight of, and darkness, like the pall of death, may spread over the world; the whole force of the popular current may be formed to overthrow the people of God; but in the hour of greatest peril the God of Elijah will raise up human instrumentalities to bear a message that will not be silenced. — Ellen G. White

The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances. — Joseph McCabe

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. — John Fante

Each religion has got their own way of making you feel like a victim. The Christians say "you are a sinner", and you better just zip up your trousers and give the money to the pope and we'll give you a room up in the hotel in the sky. — Timothy Leary

Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself.
The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself. — David Foster Wallace

And like all things, the problems disappeared. The challenges, goals and ambitions melted into folly and the reasons for all things homogenized into us and the enchantment of coffee-flavored kisses on a bright and promising morning became our religion, hope, destiny and dream. And it was beautiful then . . . . in a two room flat in the Alps of a city where love once lived. — David Ellsworth

We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it's almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender. — Rebecca Solnit

Progress in computer science is made with the distribution of revolutionary software systems and the publication of revolutionary books. We don't need a fancy information system to alert us to these grand events; they will hit us in the face. Another good excuse for ignoring the literature is that, since everyone has strong beliefs about fundamentals but can't support those beliefs rationally or consistently convince non-believers, computer science is actually a religion. — Philip Greenspun

And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life. — William Ernest Hocking

In this nonfundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle. It is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid. — Andrew Sullivan

Our civilization ... is not devaluing its awareness of the unknowable; nor is it deifying it. It is the first civilization that has severed it from religion and superstition. In order to question it. — Andre Malraux

There was a time, when we were illiterate, insane and inhuman, and we needed religion to control the masses for the good or evil, but now we are in the time of the technological advancement, we are educated and we must let go off religion. — M.F. Moonzajer

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

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just. — Voltaire

Whosoever honours his own religion and condemns other religions, does so indeed through devotion to his own religion, thinking "I will glorify my own religion". But on the contrary, in so doing he injures his own religion more gravely — Anonymous

Pity! Religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray
And every muse attend her in her way. — William Cowper

It's all about the spirit. Every man, woman and child should be seen as a spirit first, before anything else. We are all spirits in the first instance. — Andrew Agbonlahor

People of very different opinions
friends who can discuss politics, religion, and sex with perfect civility
are often reduced to red-faced rage when the topic of conversation is the serial comma or an expression like more unique. People who merely roll their eyes at hate crimes feel compelled to write jeremiads on declining standards when a newspaper uses the wrong form of its. Challenge my most cherished beliefs about the place of humankind in God's creation, and while I may not agree with you, I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. But dangle a participle in my presence, and I'll consider you a subliterate cretin no longer worth listening to, a menace to decent society who should be removed from the gene pool before you do any more damage. — Jack Lynch

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner. — Aldous Huxley

Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither. — W. Somerset Maugham

He who defends with love will be secure; Heaven will save him, and protect him with love. — Lao-Tzu

The laws of Caesar are one thing, those of Christ, another. Papinianus judges one way, our Paul another. — St. Jerome

He has done things that caused me to doubt His wisdom, but never His existence. — Paulo Coelho

Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This s the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions. — John Gray

There is a great case to be made for using religion to win arguments, as long as you only debate with other believers. — Josh Hanagarne

Cha-Cha favored short, earnest prayer, and he often wondered what took others so long., It had something to do with excess supplication, he suspected. He never presented a long list of specific requests to God, had always felt uncomfortable with the presumptuousness of "Ask and you shall receive." This might have been a result of pride, or his own middling ambition, but mostly Cha-Cha's prayers were a series of thank-yous and I'm sorrys. — Angela Flournoy

The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. — Bede

We have to be ready for the blessings God tosses at us. In order to catch your blessing, you have to let go of your burden. — Raylene Roybal

For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of electoral politics. The rest of us are expected to line up with our team just as soon as they show their colors. — Ken Wilson

There is no great religion without a great schism. All of them have it. And that's because you're dealing with something called faith. And faith is not something you can prove; faith is personal opinion. Uh, when you're dealing with something with certainty, like, y'know, science or logic, you don't have the
there's no wiggle room; that's why history is not filled with warring math cults, y'know, because you can settle the issue; you can prove something to be right or wrong, and that's the end of the argument: next case. Whereas, when you're dealing with faith, you can forever argue your point, or another point, because you're dealing with intangibles. Personally, I think, faith is what you ask of somebody when you don't have the goods to prove your point. — Tom Quinn

Few people are interested in a religion that has nothing to say to the world and offers them only life after death, when what people are really wondering is whether there is life before death. — Shane Claiborne

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions. — Nathaniel Branden

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor. — Thomas Jefferson

Religion is the root of so much misery in the world, and I've always thought there is lack of criticism against it. — Bjorn Ulvaeus

So your High Priest and Sacerdote propose to kill Death." Edroc — Christie Maurer

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I find it unnecessary, useless and frankly a bit unnecessary to get into all sorts of debates over President Obama's religion or the authenticity of his birth. I know for some people that it is an obsession. It is not with me. — Mike Huckabee

My emotional range is limited. I can't do grief, but rage is my friend. For instance, I hate death by sickness. It is nothing like Homer, the Old Testament, and Tolkien led me to expect. It is not noble and awe-inspiring. No one delivers a final soliloquy. It is as abrupt and banal as the flicking of a switch. The squiggly line on the monitor straightens out, the defibrillator doesn't even go whomp, the epinephrine is useless, the nurse doing CPR looks up and even before the doctor pronounces the words, you know. This is not what death should be. Death, the reason for religion, the subject of great literature, the certainty we spend our lives warding off, the giant mystery that looms over everything we do, death should be spectacular, not pity-inducing, a bang and not a whimper. A huge ball of fire, a shower of sparks, a final charge into the ranks of your enemies, a terrific explosion, a backward dive into the fiery pit. Not ... this. — Jessica Zafra

Dogmatic religion has been used to fantastic effect over thousands of years to fuel and exploit emotions like fear and guilt, and the feeling of being 'unworthy'. This has encouraged people to hand over their right to think and feel to a Bible and a priest because they have not had the confidence or self-belief to realize that they have a right, and an infinite gift, to make their own decisions — David Icke

The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to poetry — Joseph Joubert

have seen how the fear of becoming subject to God's revenge and punishment has paralyzed the mental and emotional lives of many people, independently of their age, religion, or life-style. This paralyzing fear of God is one of the great human tragedies. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious. — Michael Shermer

The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion. — Julian Baggini

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant. — Christopher Hitchens

Zoroastrianism? Oh, there's never been but a few hundred thousand of them at any one time, mostly located in Iran and India, but that's it. The one true faith. If you're not a Zoroastrian, I'm afraid you are bound for Hell."
The man looked stunned and shocked. "It's not fair."
The demon gave a mirthful laugh. "Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn't it? — Steven L. Peck

The task of religion is not to turn us into proper believers; it is to deepen the personal within us, to embrace the power of life, to expand our consciousness, in order that we might see things that eyes do not normally see. — John Shelby Spong

And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. — John Steinbeck

Religion is life inspired by Heavenly Love; and life is something fresh and cheerful and vigorous. — Lucy Larcom

JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion. — Ambrose Bierce

The devil himself can become beauty, so we are told, to corrupt mankind.
(Marco) — Iain Pears

Be kinder than necessary
because everyone you meet
is fighting some kind of battle — Sukhraj S. Dhillon

Science is a lie in day-light, with a lot witnesses. Religion is a truth in darkness, without any need for such witness! — Thiruman Archunan

Sniffing glue is a homeless nonbeliever's prayer. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It's time we capture our imaginations for Christ — Peter E. Gillquist

Because we hold it for 'a fundamental and undeniable truth', that religion or 'the duty which we owe to our Creator' and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. — James Madison

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. — Sam Harris

I don't know about this here eternal marriage business. But it seems to me that if you can't live with the sons-of-bitches on earth the Lord won't force you to remain with them in heaven. — J. Golden Kimball

Of course, the tricky thing about these little questions was that, once I started asking them, it was hard to stop. — Jenna Miscavige Hill

Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Acting became important. It became an art that belonged to the actor, not to the director or producer, or the man whose money had bought the studio. It was an art that transformed you into somebody else, that increased your life and mind. I had always loved acting and tried hard to learn it. But with Michael Chekhov, acting became more than a profession to me. It became a sort of religion. — Marilyn Monroe

The best religion is the most tolerant. — Delphine De Girardin

I'm religiously opposed to religion. — Victor Hugo

Accepting a religion, any, is a lot like someone in love. It doesn't matter what the beloved does or says, he or she will get a pass ... Forever. It's easier that way. It's too difficult to accept fault or to admit contradictions or falsehoods. Someone who is religious is in love, and there is no talking them out of it, regardless of what others would take as silly notions or irrational thinking. I no longer try. Life is brief, despite what those longing for an afterlife might really need to believe. Peace and acceptance is something, however, I'll always back, no matter what vehicle it rides in on. — Benjamin Kane Ethridge

The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn't really there. And the definition of a theologian is he's somebody who finds it. — Michael Ruse

Religion should not only comfort us when we are disturbed; it should also disturb us when we are comfortable. — Sidney Greenberg

If you want to get anywhere in religion, you got to keep it sweet. — Flannery O'Connor

It's gotten far easier to allow ourselves to hate than it is to choose to love. — Sam Killermann

When there is a spirit of controversy in the church or in the land, a revival is needful. The spirit of religion is not the spirit of controversy. There can be no prosperity in religion, where the spirit of controversy prevails. — Charles Grandison Finney

Prayer is not a monologue. It speaks to God and to the community. In the last analysis, religion is not what goes on inside a soul. It is what goes on in the world, between people, between us and God. To trap faith in a monologue, and pretend that it resides solely inside the self, undermines the true interchange of all belief. — David Wolpe

I think the world looks down on Republicans for their socially conservative views, which includes religion in government. — Gary Johnson

Don't talk me about religion! Don't talk me about tales for children! Be serious! Trust science, because only the science can save you! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve. — Dorothee Solle

Allow me to sum it up this way; if the Church allows this secular humanistic "social gospel" into its hallowed halls, then it is putting its very existence at risk, for it will subject itself to the government. And the Church must be subject to Christ
not the government. — Curtis A. Chamberlain

Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed. To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick. — Rajneesh

You always have a place to run to, always. The place is GOD. — Armor Of God