Religion Vision Quotes & Sayings

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. — Sri Aurobindo

The Taliban's discrimination against women is completely opposed to the practice of the Prophet and the conduct of the first ummah. The Taliban are typically fundamentalist, however, in their highly selective vision of religion (which reflects their narrow education in some of the madrasahs of Pakistan), which perverts the faith and turns it in the opposite direction of what was intended. Like all the major faiths, Muslim fundamentalists, in their struggle to survive, make religion a tool of oppression and even of violence. — Karen Armstrong

Consciously or unconsciously, our education renders us slaves to morals, religion and a perceived vision of the world; our breath is the air of the epoch in which we live. — Stefan Zweig

A man without religion or spiritual vision is like a captain who finds himself in the midst of an uncharted sea, without compass, rudder and steering wheel. He never knows where he is, which way he is going and where he is going to land. — William J.H. Boetcker

Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality. — Bede Griffiths

Mountains are cathedrals: grand and pure, the houses of my religion. I go to them as humans go to worship ... From their lofty summits, I view my past, dream of the future, and with unusual acuity I am allowed to experience the present moment. My strength renewed, my vision cleared, in the mountains I celebrate creation. On each journey I am reborn. — Anatoli Boukreev

Politics is really religion. Politics is about sacredness. Politics is about offering a vision that will bind the nation together to pursue greatness. — Jonathan Haidt

I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand. — Mary McCarthy

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest. — Alfred North Whitehead

No true power can be founded among men which does not depend upon the free union of their inclinations; and patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently direct the whole of the body politic to one end. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Sometimes critics decry spirituality as individualism, but they miss the point. Spirituality is personal, yes. To experience God's spirit, to be lost in wonder, is something profound that we can all know directly and inwardly. That is not a problem. The real problem is that, in the last two centuries, religion has actually allowed itself to become privatized. In the same way that our political and economic concerns contracted from "we" to "me," so has our sense of God and faith. In many quarters, religion abandoned a prophetic and creative vision for humanity's common life in favor of an individual quest to get one's sorry ass to heaven. And, in the process, community became isolated behind the walls of buildings where worship experiences corresponded to members' tastes and preferences and confirmed their political views. — Diana Butler Bass

Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people. — Heinz Pagels

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

Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence. — Thomas Berry

WHEN RELIGION CANNOT KNEEL Aristotle said democracy would only work in a culture already committed to virtue. There is no communal myth left that teaches us the essentially tragic nature of human life; there is no vision that proclaims the primacy of the common good; there is no transcendent image that makes human virtue a divine reflection. There is No One to reflect and No One to love and serve. I do not want to belong to a religion that cannot kneel. I do not want to live in a world where there is No One to adore. It is a lonely and labored world if I am its only center. My life is too short to discover wisdom on my own, to identify and properly name my own self-importance, to learn how to love if I have to start at zero. — Richard Rohr

Shambhala vision is universal. It has no bias towards one type of culture or group. It is not ethnocentric and does not encourage one specific kind of person, race, or religion. Shambhala vision promotes a universality in relationship to basic goodness. All human beings are basically good and an enlightened society, at various levels of manifestation, can occur in any culture. — Sakyong Mipham

It is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today. Scientism emerged not as the conclusion of scientific argument but as a chosen element in a worldview - a vision that attracted people by its contrast with what went before - which is, of course, how people very often do make such decisions, even ones that they afterwards call scientific. — Mary Midgley

When we are grasped by the vision of a center of value and power more luminous, more inclusive and more true than that to which we are devoted, we initially experience the new as the enemy or the slayer - that which destroys our "god." Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "Religion is the transition from God the Void to God the Enemy, and from God the Enemy to God the Companion." Only with death of our previous image can a new and more adequate one arise. — James W. Fowler

I have little use for religion as it is practiced, or for astrology, or for belief in witchcraft or omens of good or ill-luck. I think they all stem from some insufficiency in men's minds, perhaps from a lack of a willingness to feel themselves utterly alone. But now and then I feel that there is something beyond the material world, somethings we all feel intimations of but cannot explain. Underneath the religious vision there is the harsh fundamental reality of all our lives, because we know we must live and die as the animals we are. But sometimes I suspect that under that harsh reality there is a further vision, still deeper based, that comes nearer to true reality than the reality we know. — Winston Graham

The choice between James's vision of a Jewish religion anchored in the Law of Moses and derived from a Jewish nationalist who fought against Rome, and Paul's vision of a Roman religion that divorced itself from Jewish provincialism and required nothing for salvation save belief in Christ, was not a difficult one for the second and third generations of Jesus's followers to make.
Two thousand years later, the Christ of Paul's creation has utterly subsumed the Jesus of history. The memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army of disciples with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation and lost, has been almost completely lost to history. — Reza Aslan

Fundamentalist religion is the most pervasive vision of central planning, though many fundamentalists may oppose human central planning as a usurpation or playing God.This is consistent with the fundamentalist vision of an unconstrained God and a highly constrained man. — Thomas Sowell

There are thousands ready to die for their religion, but only are few willing to live by its principles. Because of their narrow vision and envy, they have missed the true essence and message of religion which is love and compassion. — Mata Amritanandamayi

For these Muslims, the real enemy - the thing they fear and hate - isn't Catholicism. It's secularism. It's laicism. It's atheist materialism. They think of Catholics as fellow believers. Catholicism is a religion of the Book. Catholics are one step away from converting to Islam - that's the true, original Muslim vision of Christianity. — Michel Houellebecq

Sports represent a shared vision of how we continue, as individual, team, or community, to experience a happiness or absence of care so intense, so rare, and so fleeting that we associate their experience with experience otherwise described as religious or we say the sports experience must be the tattered remnant of an experience which was once described, when first felt, as religious. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Locke made the case that religious beliefs are, in the words of the scholar Adam Wolfson, "matters of opinion, opinions to which we are all equally entitled, rather than quanta of truth or knowledge."1 In Locke's formulation, protection against persecution is one of the highest responsibilities of any government or ruler. Locke also argued that where there is coercion and persecution to change hearts and minds, it will "work" only at a very high human cost, producing in its wake both cruelty and hypocrisy. For Locke, no one person should "desire to impose" his or her view of salvation on others. Instead, in his vision of a tolerant society, each individual should be free to follow his or her own path in religion, and respect the right of others to follow their own paths: "Nobody, not even commonwealths," Locke wrote, "have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretense of religion."2 — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Toynbee emphasized the difference between technological-material progress and true progress, which he defined as spiritualization. He recognized that the Western world was indeed undergoing a crisis, which he attributed to the abandonment of religion for the cult of technology, nationalism, and militarism. For him this crisis had a name: secularism. If you know the cause of an illness, you can also find a cure: The religious heritage in all its forms had to be reintroduced, especially the "heritage of Western Christianity." Rather than a biologistic vision, he offered a voluntaristic one focused on the energy of creative minorities and exceptional individuals. — Pope Benedict XVI

All of my experience of studying religion, studying spirituality, studying natural healing, traditional medicine, has kind of enriched my vision of the world. Not only seeing reality as this moment, but as a culmination of all of the history behind us, and all of the fruit that hopefully we will be able to grow from the seeds that we are trying to plant, of goodness and peace and beauty and equality. — Assata Shakur

Vision is the end of religion. — William Blake

No vision of God and heaven ever experienced by the most exalted prophet can, in my opinion, match the vision of the universe as seen by Newton or Einstein — Isaac Asimov

When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion. — Nancy Pearcey

If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian. — Fidel Castro

I do not believe it right for one group to impose its vision of morality on an entire society. — Nelson Rockefeller

Overcoming the problems we face today and planting the seed of peace is not a task for any one nation, people, or religion. This will be possible only when spiritually awakened people from every corner of the world share the power of a single vision and create an alliance of Earth-Humans. — Ilchi Lee

The glory of God is upon you.
Arise in great might and chase your dream. — Lailah Gifty Akita

God is the most obvious thing in the world. He is absolutely self-evident - the simplest, clearest and closest reality of life and consciousness. We are only unaware of him because we are too complicated, for our vision is darkened by the complexity of pride. We seek him beyond the horizon with our noses lifted high in the air, and fail to see that he lies at our very feet. We flatter ourselves in premeditating the long, long journey we are going to take in order to find him, the giddy heights of spiritual progress we are going to scale, and all the time are unaware of the truth that "God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves." We are like birds flying in quest of the air, or men with lighted candles searching through the darkness for fire. — Alan W. Watts

Not only is religion thriving, but it is thriving because it helps people to adapt and survive in the world. In his book Darwin's Cathedral, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argues that religion provides something that secular society doesn't: a vision of transcendent purpose. Consequently, religious people have a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make them more cohesive, adaptive, and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force. — Dinesh D'Souza

Some people automatically associate morality and altruism with a religious vision of the world. But I believe it is a mistake to think that morality is an attribute only of religion. We can imagine two types of spirituality: one tied to religion, while the other arises spontaneously in the human heart as an expression of love for our neighbors and a desire to do them good. — Dalai Lama

America's forefathers had a vision of a spiritually enlightened utopia, in which freedom of thought, education of the masses, and scientific advancement would replace the darkness of outdated religious superstition. — Dan Brown

The last 100 years of research into the human brain ... sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body ... our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine ... — Steven Pinker

In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.

To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love. — Caryll Houselander

How will it end? ... a vision of a universal religion, which will embrace all creeds; a universal government which will embrace all humanity; a universal knowledge which will make all mankind kin ... — Carl H. Claudy

Many priests and employees at temples work for pay. No one should judge religion on the basis of the shortcomings of such workers. We should frame suitable rules and regulations for preventing them from falling prey to material temptations. The true guiding spirits of religion are those who engage in selfless service while dedicating their entire lives to attaining the vision of God. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional - the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations. — Geoffrey Wood

Total Enlightenment is 'Vision without Purpose'. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

What is Religion according to you?

"Religion is your idea of leading life, the value you not only hold close to your heart but ones that you practice, the passions in your life, the faith in your ideals, the vision you have for your life and the society around you. — Vishwas Mudagal

You believe in God?" demanded Billy Karma.
"I believe in thirty-seven separate and distinct gods," answered Argyle proudly. "That puts me thirty-six ahead of you."
"It makes you a pagan."
"It makes you a man of limited vision," said Argyle. — Mike Resnick

But we're not humanity, we're just one culture - one culture out of hundreds of thousands that have lived their vision on this planet and sung their song. If it were humanity that needed changing, then we'd be out of luck. But it isn't humanity that needs changing, it's just ... us. — Daniel Quinn

I went into the ministry to use the church to elicit political change according to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution and proletarian empowerment. Edrita [his wife] could sense that I was on a long and uncertain path. She was always more conservative than I, but she did share my basic social values and was willing at least to let me test my political follies ... Whenever I read the New Testament after 1950, I was trying to read it entirely without its crucial premises of incarnation and resurrection. That required a lot of circular reasoning for me to establish what the text said. I habitually assumed that truth in religion was finally reducible to economics (with Marx) or psychosexual motives (with Freud) or self assertive power (with Nietzsche). It was truly a self-deceptive time for me, but I had no inkling of its insidious dangers. — Thomas C. Oden

With God the vision is possible to realize. — Lailah Gifty Akita

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") — George Eliot

A state of scepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude, that if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the principal causes which favoroud the establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition. ( ... ) an object much less deserving would have been sufficient to fill the vacant place in their hearts. — Edward Gibbon

Nine times out of ten a man's broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This is not particularly paradoxical; it is, when we come to think of it, quite inevitable. His vision of his own village may really be full of varieties; and even his vision of his own nation may have a rough resemblance to the reality. But his vision of the world is probably smaller than the world ... hence he is never so inadequate as when he is universal; he is never so limited as when he generalizes. This is the fallacy in the many modern attempts at a creedless creed, at something variously described as ... undenominational religion or a world faith to embrace all the faiths in the world ... When a philosophy embraces everything it generally squeezes everything, and squeezes it out of shape; when it digests it necessarily assimilates. — G.K. Chesterton

Beyond the visible is invisible. — Lailah Gifty Akita

[French Revolution rejected] the sacred foundation both of history and of the state. History was no longer measured on the basis of an idea of God that had preceded it and given it shape. The state came to be understood in purely secular terms, based on rationalism and the will of citizens.
The secular state arose for the first time, abandoning and excluding any divine guarantee or legitimation of the political element as a mythological vision of the world and declaring that God is a private question that does not belong to the public sphere or to the democratic formation of the public will. Public life was now considered the realm of reason alone, which had no place for a seemingly unknowable God. From this perspective, religion and faith in God belonged to the realm of sentiment, not of reason. God and His will therefore ceased to be relevant to public life. — Pope Benedict XVI

We Americans can be rightly proud of the fact that the right to the free and unfettered exercise of religion is a primary principle in the vision and founding of our country. It defines us as a people, and has uniquely contributed to making this nation great. — Salvatore J. Cordileone

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown. — Alan W. Watts

I stand for My Vision of all Good Images
in Love and Life.
An image you won't Delete :
Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
September 15, 2016
Amen — Petra Hermans

He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth. — John Milton

I don't want to participate in traditional Indian religious ceremonies - dance in a sun dance or pray in a sweat lodge or go on a vision quest with the help of a medicine man. The power of these ceremonies has an appeal, but I'm content with what little religion I already have. — Ian Frazier

Around the time my first marriage of twenty-one years was ending, I had spent a lot of time reflecting on the fairytale promises of living "happily ever after and being "forever in love." I thought about how the expectations of our families, friends, religion and society each contribute to the guilt and shame many of us experience when our partnerships and marriages do not work out the way we expected. The familiar promises of being together until death do us part" seemed antiquated and misguided in our modern world. Why wan't being happy, in love and committed 'for now' a more widely accepted and reasonable vision? — Theresa J. Knight

It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet. — Sam Harris

If you look at the practice of 'crisis management,' and maybe squint at it a little, you can make out in the corners of your vision the ghosts or the vestiges of a much older, but still thoroughly American, form of public life, one centered not on public opinion but on religion. — Jonathan Dee

We need great prophetic leaders in religion and in spirituality ... what we are getting is lacking in vision ... not able to engage with the diversity of the culture. — John O'Donohue

To him food was identity, culture, family, how you define home and love and who you are - all of it at once ... It's not just the pie. It's the chemistry and physics. It's place and time and history and religion and music ... I felt blurred by his presence, overwhelmed with double vision - the world as I was seeing it and the world as Henry would have. — Bridget Asher

Looking behind, I am lifted with gratitude. Looking forward, I am filled with vision. Looking upward, I am filled with strength. Looking within, I discover peace. — Sukhraj S. Dhillon

the president began dictating what became his famous declaration of hope for "a world founded upon four essential human freedoms" - freedom of speech and expression; freedom of religion; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. These were, he said, not a vision for "a distant millennium" but "a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. — Douglas Brinkley

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say ... " They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision ... " They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold ... " But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe. — Sheri S. Tepper

How can we lead the blind, if we are blind ourselves? His wine is coming to blur our vision, so that we can receive His vision. — John Crowder

I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life. — Lin Yutang

Don't expect people to understand your purpose when God didn't give them your vision. — Turcois Ominek

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both. — James A. Michener

The global nature of the religious knowledge of a learned Muslim sitting in Isfahan in the fourteenth century was very different from that of a scholastic thinker in Paris or Bologna of the same period. On the basis of the Quranic doctrine of religious universality and the vast historical experiences of a global nature, Islamic civilization developed a cosmopolitan and worldwide religious perspective unmatched before the modern period in any other religion. This global vision is still part and parcel of the worldview of traditional Muslims, of those who have not abandoned their universal vision as a result of the onslaught of modernism or reactions to this onslaught in the form of what has come to be called fundamentalism. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The vision of Christ that thou dost see is my vision's greatest enemy . Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read'st black where I read white. His seventy disciples sent against religion and government . — William Blake

That which reduces our flawed vision is called religion [dharma]. It is non-religion [adharma] that increases a flawed vision. The worldly life is indeed the result of a flawed vision. — Dada Bhagwan

It is more than A Job. It is A Mission.
A vision. A complete New Message.
Amen,
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
September 26, 2016 — Petra Hermans

There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought. For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves with comfortable fantasies. — Olaf Stapledon