Quotes About Religion

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love.

Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church—and I wasn't about to dare the deed now. I knew very little about the religion. It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.

That is Christianity at heart: a single miracle surrounded and sustained by stories, like an island surrounded by the sea.

Bapu Ghandi said, All religions are true. I just want to love God, I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think Business as usual. But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story.

Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way.

I just want to love God.

Do you understand? You've been praying to a crucified chimpanzee all these years. Your Son of Man is not a god-he's just an ape on a cross!

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

And she prays with her eyes closed. It's just a crucifix. And if he's an ape, so be it-he's an ape. He's still the Son of God.

And so, when she heard if Hare Krishnas, she didn't hear right. She heard Hairless Christians, and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

The process of secularisation arises not from the loss of faith but from the loss of social interest in the world of faith. It begins the moment men feel that religion is irrelevant to the common way of life and that society as such has nothing to do with the truths of faith.

An interpretation which confines itself to the moral teachings of the gospel deprives Christianity of its historical and theological roots. Christianity without the Old Testament ceases to be Christianity and becomes quite a different religion, as the Fathers saw when they condemned the Gnostics, Marcion and the Manichees. The continuity of Christianity with the tradition of the Old Testament and the conception of the Church as the new Israel is a fundamental part of the Christian faith.

Western religion and theology represent a synthesis of two different traditions, the Hebraic tradition of religious revelation, which is represented by the Bible, and the Hellenic tradition of metaphysical or natural theology.

The secular state becomes almost automatically totalitarian, so that no room is left for man's spiritual freedom.

Modern man may deify science and technology and set up a religion of 'Scientific Humanism' which offers the utopian prospect of unlimited progress. But all such constructions are inevitably fragile, since they are dependent on human will as well as intelligence, and we have seen in our own generation how the irrational element in human nature may prove stronger than scientific intelligence.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there's no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That's all crap.

Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.