Religion Definitions Quotes & Sayings

as if any one but a fool imagined that he could compress a thing like art or religion or science into an epigram which could be lifted from its context and, so lifted, continue to make sense. Giving and collecting definitions is not philosophy but a parlour game. The writer's definition of religion (as of art and so forth) is coextensive with this entire book, and will nowhere be found in smaller compass. Nor will it be found in its completeness there; for no book is wholly self-explanatory, but solicits the co-operation of a reasonably thoughtful and instructed reader. Religion, — R.G. Collingwood

The shortest definition of religion: interruption. — Johann Baptist Metz

When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Winterson has her own unmistakeable voice, tuned to express her obsessional preoccupation with sexual passion raised to the power of revealed religion. ( ... ) The whole book is a kind of chant. It is a playful addition to the Winterson oeuvre. Yet it is not a slight work so much as, homonymically, a work of sleight- - a word for which the Shorter OED gives six definitions, ranging from trickery to wisdom, all of which apply to The.PowerBook. — Victoria Glendinning

Religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others. — Reza Aslan

With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy. — Neil Postman

All theology knowingly or not is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed. — Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience
one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge. — Evelyn Underhill

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

However, just as earlier, when Christianity was introduced it didn't eliminate pagan conceptualizations, but layered new beliefs on top of them, so science simply added to the western mindset. It didn't fully displace religion, luck, fate, etc. Science just heaped other definitions onto the average person's already conglomerated psychic truckload. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay. — Sheri S. Tepper

The world of religion is no longer a concrete fact proposed for our acceptance and adoration. It is an unfathomable universe which engulfs us, and which lives its own majestic uncomprehended life: and we discover that our careful maps and cherished definitions bear little relation to its unmeasured reality. — Evelyn Underhill

The opposing barristers were in tactical agreement (because it was plainly the judge's view) that the issue was not merely a matter of education. The court must choose, on behalf of the children, between total religion and something a little less. Between cultures, identities, states of mind, aspirations, sets of family relations, fundamental definitions, basic loyalties, unknowable futures. In such matters there lurked an innate predisposition in favor of the status quo, as long as it appeared benign. — Ian McEwan

If I look at the definition of Hinduism, the Supreme Court of India has given a beautiful definition; it says that Hinduism is not a religion, it is actually a way of life. — Narendra Modi

A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion. — Joseph Campbell

Religion is an attempt, a noble attempt, to suggest in human terms more-than-human realities. — Christopher Morley

The thesis that the universe has an originating divine cause is logically inconsistent with all extant definitions of causality and with a logical requirement upon these and all possible valid definitions or theories of causality. — Quentin Smith

I do not criticize religion as such, but I criticize the concept and the definition of "religion" - as I said in Genealogies. — Talal Asad

E.P. Whipple calls fanaticism "religion caricatured," which is a full definition in a word. — James Parton

Theism, as a way of conceiving God, has become demonstrably inadequate, and the God of theism not only is dying but is probably not revivable. If the religion of the future depends on keeping alive the definitions of theism, then the human phenomenon that we call religion will have come to an end. If Christianity depends on a theistic definition of God, then we must face the fact that we are watching this noble religious system enter the rigor mortis of its own death throes. — John Shelby Spong

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Emotionalist:
A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine. — Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Penitent: Someone who has been made incapable of enjoying himself. — Idries Shah