Quotes About Religion

Transcendentalists assert that the human mind is the same—and just as open to inspiration—across all boundaries of geography, culture, race, and religion. They celebrate the expansive, daring explorations of the Eastern mind, and find much wisdom in Hinduism and Buddhism.

There are innocent men who worship God after the tradition of

I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced.

Instead of trying to create a new religion from scratch, aim to breathe new life into the forms that already exist. If you are alive, you'll enliven all you touch. To revive faith from dead tradition, three things are needed: soul, soul, and more soul.

Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.

The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion, take, is the natural genius of the British mind.

It is with religion as with marriage. A youth marries in haste; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes. 'I should have much to say,' he might reply, 'if the question were open, but I have a wife and children, and all question is closed for me.

I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers.

We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.

The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts.

in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.

My religion is a conspiracy My prayer meetings are a conspiracy My lying quiet is a conspiracy My attempt to wake up is a conspiracy My desire to have friends is a conspiracy My ignorance, my backwardness, a conspiracy.

The Shastras say that a son who does not obey his father has no place in heaven.

It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings.

For every American who believes he's going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they're going to Heaven.

If you are looking for a religion centered around yourself, Ben, I must agree that Christianity is a poor choice.

When hard times come, people should lose their faith in false doctrine, not in God.

Wesley said, "Every Christian is happy; . . . he who is not happy is not a Christian.

Are we not the clay and God the potter? When he refuses to conform to our wills, do we discard him? If you are looking for a religion centered around yourself, Ben, I must agree that Christianity is a poor choice.

John Wesley said, "A sour religion is the devil's religion."[284] The sure way to have a sour religion is to believe in a sour God. We play right into the devil's hands when we fail to recognize and teach the happiness of God.

Atheism is an empty cup crying out to be filled, while religion is an empty cup appearing to be filled.

Biblical religion . . . views the whole course of history as a movement from a garden to a city, and it fundamentally affirms that movement. . . . Redemption in Jesus Christ reaches just as far as the fall.

I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven.

If all the Bibles in America were simultaneously dusted, the sun would be obscured for a week. It's not a magic talisman that works without being read. A Bible does us no harm as long as it remains closed.