Quotes About Religion

If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself.

When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

I prefer Buddhism because it gives three principles in combination, which no other religion does. This is what man wants for a good and happy life. Neither god nor soul can save society.

Let them be reassured, it has never been one of our intentions to ban religion in society, but solely to protect the national education system from any conspicuous display of religious affiliation.

The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.

If Christianity were meant for this life only, it could be seriously asked if it were indeed a satisfying religion. Many of the worldly religions provide blessings in the flesh and the unbeliever, as we have pointed out, does many good works. But the fact that the King is coming separates the true faith from all other of men's ideas on how to please God.

He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires greater stock of religious merit than he would gain by the repetition of 10,000 prayers. Zen Zoroaster

There are people, moreover, for whom even the absence of God is absent, who are shaken not by the privation of providence but by the privation of the privation, who live in a completely ungoverned and unconsoling world. To use the terms of another religious existentialist of Judaism against him: there is a man who is lonelier than the lonely man of faith, and he is the lonely man of no faith.

Religion in this country is worse than communism. Say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing and, look--there's the Stasi knocking at your door.

Once he'd realized how the t'landa Til ability could be utilized, it had been a simple matter for Aruk to make up some doctrine, compose a few hymns, and write several chants and litanies. And that was all it took to produce a "religion" that credulous fools belonging to inferior species could embrace.

Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion. [Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 1968.]

Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method

When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.

Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.

Among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

Awe rather than faith is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.

As long as man sees religion as a source of satisfaction for his own needs, it is not God whom he serves but his own self.

This was a religious problem, my father felt; people can want to be deceived. Do not deceive, the Kotzker rebbe insisted, and that also means do not deceive oneself by being gullible.

The true goal for man is to be what he does. The worth of a religion is the worth of the individuals living it. A mitsvah, therefore, is not mere doing but an act that embraces both the doer and the deed. The means may be external, but the end is personal. Your deeds be pure, so that ye shall be holy. A hero is he who is greater than his feats, and a pious man is he who is greater than his rituals. The deed is definite, yet the task is infinite.

Among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin. Modern

It has not only detested beauty when produced at the price of justice; it has rejected the ritual when performed by the morally corrupted. Even religion itself, worship, was not considered to be an absolute. "Your prayers are an abomination," said Isaiah to the exploiters of the poor. Stay away from the synagogue, wrote the Gaon of Wilna to his household, if you cannot abstain from envy and gossiping about the dresses of your fellow attendants.

It is not utility that we seek in religion but eternity.

To the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things consisted in their being an object of divine care.