Religious Instruction Quotes & Sayings

She made only one educational stipulation: religious instruction. Unlike Aziz, who was racked by ambiguity, she had remained devout. 'You have your Hummingbird,' she told him, 'but I, whatsitsname, have the Call of God. A better noise, whatsitsname, than that man's hum.' It was one of her rare political comments ... and then the day arrived when Aziz threw out the religious tutor. — Salman Rushdie

I was for two years a pupil at the Model School in Fort street which was then conducted upon the Irish national system, and if any special religious instruction was given in connection with that system, I do not recollect it. — Edmund Barton

Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her. — Kurt Vonnegut

JUST WHAT IS initiation? A distinction must be made between its procedure, that is, is functional operation, and its purpose. This purpose is a state or condition of preparation. The preparation consists of a series of tests and trials of the initiate to determine worthiness of elevation to a higher religious or social status. This preparation is likewise a form of instruction - a teaching, usually in symbolic form - of a specialized knowledge. — Max Guilmot

The bringing up, as of a child; instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties. — Noah Webster

At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming. — Lionel Blue

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ... We need believing people. — Adolf Hitler

Most professional beliefs, especially Christian religious beliefs, are taught through formal, usually verbal, instruction. Such formal instruction may be devoid of personal experience to match the verbal teaching. . . Just as the instruction is verbal, the learner's profession of the belief is verbal. — Donovan L. Graham

If India is not to declare spiritual bankruptcy, religious instruction of its youth must be held to be at least as necessary as secular instruction. — Mahatma Gandhi

During our religious instruction in school, we always asked: How can one prove the existence of God? And I have learned that the Catholic Church, which is never at a loss for an answer when it comes to existential questions, responds as follows: This question simply does not arise. — Jean-Claude Juncker

The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States. — Lord Acton

Whatever may be the merits of a religious system, its effects upon the mass of mankind must depend in an important degree upon its teachers. All instruction and all truth, except simple mathematical truth, is modified by the medium through which it is conveyed. — Benjamin Robbins Curtis

Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment - originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.18 — Jonathan Haidt

In some cases - most notably the Christian - one revelation is apparently not sufficient, and needs to be reinforced by successive apparitions, with the promise of a further but ultimate one to come. In other cases, the opposite difficulty occurs and the divine instruction is delivered, only once, and for the final time, to an obscure personage whose lightest word then becomes law. Since all of these revelations, many of them hopelessly inconsistent, cannot by definition be simultaneously true, it must follow that some of them are false and illusory. It could also follow that only one of them is authentic, but in the first place this seems dubious and in the second place it appears to necessitate religious war in order to decide whose revelation is the true one. — Christopher Hitchens

Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience. — Charles Darwin

No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination. — Thomas Jefferson

And how can we ever again succeed in educating children to become moral men and women if, in America's public schools, we consciously deny them all religious instruction, and deny them access to that primary source of morality, God's own word. The Bible is the one book from which they are expressly not allowed to be taught. — Pat Buchanan

The museums of medieval Europe, from Holland to Tuscany, are crammed with instruments and devices upon which the holy men labored devoutly, in order to see how long they could keep someone alive while being roasted. It is not needful to go into further details, but there were also religious books of instruction in this art, and guides for the detection of heresy by pain. — Christopher Hitchens

The conception of secular state is derived from the liberal democratic tradition of west. No institution which is maintained wholly out of state funds shall be used for the purpose of religious instruction irrespective of the question whether the religious instruction is given by the state or any other body. — B.R. Ambedkar

Whoever is afraid must needs be dependent; a weak thing needs support. That is why the primitive mind, from deep psychological necessity, begot religious instruction and embodied it in a magician or a priest. — Carl Jung

Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices. — George Berkeley

It is a fact that unless children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they, and the society which they constitute or control, will go to destruction. Consequently, when a state resolves that religious instruction shall be banished from the schools and other literary institutions, it virtually resolves on self-destruction. — Charles Hodge

Excluded from all fellowship at meals, excluded from all sacrifices, excluded from instruction and from matrimonial alliances, abject and excluded from all religious duties, let them wander over ,this earth. — Guru Nanak

No nation, and few individuals, are really brought into [God's] camp by the historical study of the biography of Jesus, simply as biography. The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a a sense of sin which they already had... The "Gospels" [came] later, and were written, not to make Christians, but to edify Christians already made. — C.S. Lewis

The only times during my religious instruction I remember hearing God's name invoked with any sincere conviction at all was in the oft-repeated and breathtakingly chauvinistic claim that Israel's 'miraculous' military victories over much-stronger enemies proved that He was ever on Zion's side. — Rick Perlstein

That children shall be compelled to receive religious instruction which is in antagonism to the wishes of their parents, is what no man with say sense of justice would suggest. — Charles Tupper

I want to see religious instruction and sermons held in German in the mosques. The ideal, in my view, would be for imams to be trained in Germany and to speak our language, just as the Roman Catholic Church now holds mass in German and gave up Latin long ago. — Wolfgang Schauble

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
[Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a 'a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk' with 'the following inscription, and not a word more ... because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.' It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance] — Thomas Jefferson

It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God's professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments. — A.W. Tozer

I cannot see how it can be argued that one should speak in tones of reverence and awe about the alleged divine instruction-in Psalms-to grab the defenseless bodies of innocent infants and dash their brains out against the nearest rocks or walls. — Steve Allen

In Holland, they have come to precisely the same conclusion. There they have adopted a system of secular education, because they have found it impracticable to unite the religious bodies in any system of combined religious instruction. — Richard Cobden

The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages. — Edward Gibbon

The State (meaning the gov't and society) derives no inconsiderable advantage from the peoples instruction (in other words, education). The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition.
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The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction, is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of society. — Adam Smith

For all the tenure of humans on Earth, the night sky had been a companion and an inspiration. The stars were comforting. They seemed to demonstrate that the heavens were created for the benefit and instruction of humans. This pathetic conceit became the conventional wisdom worldwide. No culture was free of it. Some people found in the skies an aperture to the religious sensibility. Many were awestruck and humbled by the glory and scale of the cosmos. Others were stimulated to the most extravagant flights of fancy. — Carl Sagan

The sword of the Spirit has been muffled up and decked out with flowers and ribbons, author writes, conveying the sentiments of a Congregationist minister on men's ceding of moral and religious instruction and correction as women's work. — Nancy Pearcey

So long as the mental and moral instruction of man is left solely in the hands of hired servants of the public
let them be teachers of religion, professors of colleges, authors of books, or editors of journals or periodical publications, dependent upon their literary incomes for their daily bread, so long shall we hear but half the truth; and well if we hear so much. Our teachers, political, scientific, moral, or religious; our writers, grave or gay, are compelled to administer to our prejudices and to perpetuate our ignorance. — Frances Wright

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world. — Christopher Hitchens