Quotes About Religion

All the Abrahamic faiths are marked by violence.

Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia - even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

If the Pope spoke out with moral authority against violent Islam, I would be there cheering him on.

Offending someone's religious sensibilities can never justify a violent response. There are no 'but' qualifiers, and the sooner that this lesson is internalized, the rosier our future will be.

Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.

The violent radicals do not legitimately represent the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims.

We've seen violent responses to 'Satanic Verses.' We've seen violent responses to the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in an evil way.

We are in a global war with a radical and violent form of the Islamic religion, and it is irresponsible and dangerous to deny it.

The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete. Remember that those standing up to Muslim fanatics are mostly Muslims.

We have a toxic ideology, hopefully very small, within Islam; certainly most people, most Muslims, don't agree with this violent, jihadist approach.

Is there a more violent book than the Bible?

The thing I worry about with religion isn't to do much with forgetting Christmas. It's to do with religion being angry and violent.

You won't see Christians violently attacking people for criticising their religion like you do with Islam, things like the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Atheists do not seek to violently impose their non-belief onto others. They simply reject all gods inherent to the 10,000 religions known to mankind.

My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.

A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, 'As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, the Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office.'

Despite what one might gather from the shrill rantings of the leftist commentariat, for whom religion is a sort of disease, religious difference in the United States has rarely led to serious social strife. That is no small achievement, and one that virtually no other Western democracy can boast.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

I do believe in Christ, but I would not hold myself up as any paragon of virtue at all - far from it, really.

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.