RELIGION QUOTES XII

quotations about religion

People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.

THICH NHAT HANH

Living Buddha, Living Christ

Tags: Thich Nhat Hanh


Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

WILLIAM JAMES

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness", The Varieties of Religious Experience

Tags: William James


I am terrified of what seems to me to be a bottleneck that civilization is passing through. On the one hand we have 21st-century disruptive technology proliferating, and on the other we have first-century superstition. A civilization is going to either pass through this bottleneck more or less intact or it won't. And perhaps that fear sounds grandiose, but civilizations end. On any number of occasions, some generation has witnessed the ruination of everything they and their ancestors had built. What especially terrifies me about religious thinking is the expectation on the part of many that civilization is bound to end based on prophecy and its ending is going to be glorious.

SAM HARRIS

debate with Rick Warren, April, 2007

Tags: Sam Harris


Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.

ARTHUR MILLER

The Crucible

Tags: Arthur Miller


The fundamental religion of most of mankind is the faith that God has revealed Himself to us and not to the barbarians. Our tribe is the one God chose and so if we vanquish the other tribes and rain fire and destruction on them, we're only carrying out God's Will.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"God Changes With the Weather", Salon, December 29, 2009

Tags: Garrison Keillor


In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Hind Swaraj

Tags: Mahatma Gandhi


Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God -- imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant -- and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave?

RICHARD DAWKINS

The God Delusion

Tags: Richard Dawkins


I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.

WALT DISNEY

attributed, How to Be Like Walt

Tags: Walt Disney


No religion is the new religion.

ANDREW BROWN

"No religion is the new religion", The Guardian, January 20, 2016


Religion, like all things, begins with self,
And naught is known, until one knows himself.

EDWIN LEIBFREED

"Veritas Vincit"

Tags: Edwin Leibfreed


The challenge would be not to follow a religion unthinkingly, but to succeed in taking seriously a text that was written two thousand years ago -- in taking seriously every word and every story -- and nevertheless to live in the present in a humanitarian and enlightened way. Nobody says that this is easy, but human consciousness is capable of it. Religion is never just the Word of God. It is the ever-changing relationship of humans to this word. It is from just this movement of the human spirit that the great cultures have arisen.

NAVID KERMANI

"Of Course Religion is First and Foremost a Duty", First Things, January 20, 2016


I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions--and should be vigorously opposed.

STEVE ALLEN

Reflections

Tags: Steve Allen


Most of us make an eight-day clock of our religion: we wind it up on Sunday morning and pay no heed to it for the rest of the week.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.

JAMES MADISON

"Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments"

Tags: James Madison


The only consistent purpose of human religion was as a cover for the most bestial excesses of mass homicide, torment, and atrocity.

MICK FARREN

Darklost

Tags: Mick Farren


A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation.

HOSEA BALLOU

Edge-Tools of Speech

Tags: Hosea Ballou


The foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

Stranger in a Strange Land

Tags: Robert A. Heinlein


If the very nature of religion is change, and we don't progress individually or as a species, then we have been left behind. Change is inevitable. I'm not sure structured religion will allow this, hence why its necessary to leave, for everyone. Once this happens, then the only religion one needs is: Life.

GEORGE ELERICK

"How I Found God After Leaving Religion", Patheos, February 13, 2016


Spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it.

MARK TWAIN

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Tags: Mark Twain


The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

"Character", The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson