Quotes About Religion

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosohpy.

Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society.

Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin.

But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.

We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit.

The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity.

In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.

Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.

In 528, still the crown prince, not yet king, Khusro discovered that his father's Mazdakite allies were conspiring against the throne. Driven, perhaps, by a combination of loyalty, anger, and a desire to demonstrate a kingly sort of resolution, in 529 the prince arrested, tortured, and executed Mazdak, and followed up with a massacre of his followers. (The Mazdakites would one day serve as inspiration for Islam's dissident Shi'a.)

A bishop in Gaul could anoint a novitiate with oil from the olive orchards of Greece, bless the event with wine from the vineyards of Italy, and celebrate the sacrament with bread baked with the wheat of Africa while wearing a garment made by Syrian weavers from Chinese silk, all because of the ships.

'Tis mad idolatryTo make the service greater than the god.

A politician… one that would circumvent God.

And I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer's horse.

Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto?

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.

I have a daughter;Would any of the stock of BarabbasHad been her husband rather than a Christian!

Being holy . . . does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being exceptionally religious or being religious at all; it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it meas being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human.

The separation of religion from the practical affairs of society is a convenient doctrine for those who fear that social change would threaten of modify their own political and social self-interest.

The way you buy has a lot to do with the way you worship and who you worship and what you worship.

There are no athiests in foxholes.

It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly concerned with our being religious.

Pharisees—men who lived in the strength of a fellowship that had behind it the greatest religious tradition in all the world, but who, because they trusted more to their tradition than to the God who inspired it, were unable to recognise the still further call of God when it came to them.

There are no atheists in the foxholes.