RELIGION QUOTES V
quotations about religion
The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
attributed, The God Delusion
Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling?
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough.
BONO
interview, Larry King Weekend, December 1, 2002
Religion being the chief band of human society, it is a happy thing, when itself is well contained within the true band of unity. The quarrels, and divisions about religion, were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion of the heathen, consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief. For you may imagine, what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors, and fathers of their church, were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, that he is a jealous God; and therefore, his worship and religion, will endure no mixture, nor partner. We shall therefore speak a few words, concerning the unity of the church; what are the fruits thereof; what the bounds; and what the means.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Unity in Religion", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Religion is the theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so--pardon the pun--so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist.
STEPHEN KING
Revival
Without religion no man can soar.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Persecution is as necessary to religion as pruning to an orchard.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Is There a God?", The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell
Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice: everything is lost by failure to obey God's call.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
No man is to make Religion for himself; but to receive it from God; and the teachers of the Church are not to make Religion for their hearers, but to show it only, as received from God.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
It is your organized religions that have made it clear through their most sacred scriptures that cruelty and killing is an acceptable response to human frailty and human differences. This goes against every human instinct, but organized religion has reorganized human thoughts. Some humans have even been turned against their own instinct for survival. And so people go around maiming and killing each other, because they've been told quite directly that this is what God does to them--and what God wants them to do to each other.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
The New Revelations: A Conversation with God
I'm for decency -- period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out.
FRANK SINATRA
Playboy Magazine, February 1962
The certainty of divine love and divine justice for the individual soul is that better part which no priest or potentate can take away and no revolution can defeat. And just to the extent that this is forgotten and dependence is placed on forms and ceremonies, on ecclesiastical authority, on governmental decrees, on arbitrary instruction--on anything outside of the soul itself--to exactly that extent will religion, or what passes for it, become worthless, if not corrupt.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
Look at the most religious areas of the world at present -- the Middle East and the United States. These are sick societies, and they're going to get sicker. People are never more dangerous than when they have nothing left to believe in except God.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Labyrinths
Sauce maketh palatable the dish of the epicure; even so doth religion sweeten the bitter cup of adversity to the Christian.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs