Quotes About Religion

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

The challenge facing atheists is how to reverse the process of religious colonization: how to separate ideas and rituals from the religious institutions which have laid claim to them but don't truly own them.

It was not by mere coincidence that sex so disturbed us for thousands of years: repressive religious dictates and social taboos grew out of aspects of our nature that cannot now just be wished away.

An atheist may, of course, also feel clean after taking a bath and dirty without one, but the mikveh ritual, associating outer hygiene with the recovery of a particular kind of inner purity, like so many other symbolic practices promoted by religions, manages to use a physical activity to support a spiritual lesson.

religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.

And if we were to show up at any college humanities department in urgent search of purpose and meaning, or were to break down in a museum gallery in a quest for forgiveness or charity, we would be swiftly removed and possibly handed over to psychiatric authorities. The intensity of need and the emotional craving that religions once willingly engaged with have not been thought acceptable within the contemporary cultural realm.

I lost the ability to consider the question of predestination with necessary scepticism.

Lorsque les Blancs sont venus en Afrique, nous avions la terre et ils avaient la Bible. Ils nous ont appris à prier les yeux fermés: lorsque nous les avons ouverts, les Blancs avaient la terre et nous la Bible.

there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

For Graham's mother there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

La sua fede era autentica, ma così duttile e venata d'ironia che Dio era esposto alle sue critiche quanto l'arcivescovo di Canterbury (che in privato lui chiamava Patatone).

Geoffrey's bad enough but I'm glad I wasn't married to Jesus.

There might be more to the universe than any one religion could explain.

Your religion is all about being miserable, and wretched. Ours had time for play, and joy. How is this an improvement?

I have always considered Pascal's Wager a questionable bet to place, since any God worth believing in would prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.

I learned at that time, for an absolute certainty, that I did not believe in an intervening God, since I did not spend one second praying or trying to make a deal with God.

How did we ever get to believe that faithfulness involved simply retaining past forms and thinking? With the Creator God as our Father, how did we ever become the socially conservative stiflers of innovation that we are so notoriously perceived to be?

I gave up Christianity at about fourteen. Came back to it when getting on for thirty. An almost purely philosophical conversion. I didn't want to. I'm not the religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master: but since the facts seemed to be the opposite I had to give in.

Those of religious faith see time as evidence of god. For surely nothing could be created without a creator. Nothing could be universal and not be divine. All absolutes are part of the One Absolute.

Over many centuries science has weakened the hold of religion, not by disproving the existence of God, but by invalidating arguments for God based on what we observe in the natural world. The multiverse idea offers an explanation of why we find ourselves in a universe favorable to life that does not rely on the benevolence of a creator, and so if correct will leave still less support for religion.