Quotes About Religion

Religion has not civilized man - man has civilized religion. God improves as man advances.

That church teaches that infinite innocence was sacrificed for me! I do not want it! I do not wish to go to heaven unless I can settle by the books, and go there because I ought to go there. I have said, and I say again, I do not wish to be a charity angel. I have no ambition to become a winged pauper of the skies.

If you say to a man: "Eighteen hundred years ago the dead were raised," he will reply: "Yes, I know that." And if you say: "A hundred thousand years from now all the dead will be raised," he will probably reply: "I presume so." But if you tell him: "I saw a dead man raised to-day," he will ask, "From what madhouse have you escaped?

If what is known as the Christian Religion is true, nothing can be more wonderful than the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke say nothing about "salvation by faith;" that they do not even hint at the doctrine of the atonement, and are as silent as empty tombs as to the necessity of believing anything to secure happiness in this world or another.

Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.

The idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put him to death that he might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the consequences of his own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and natural brain.

A religion that does not command the respect of the greatest minds will, in a little while, excite the mockery of all.

That he attacked the religion of his time because it was cruel. That this excited the hatred of those in power, and that Christ was arrested, tried and crucified. For many centuries this great Peasant of Palestine has been worshiped as God.

the Bible is a book written by ignorance—at the instigation of fear.

we are taught that God is exceedingly anxious that we should believe a certain thing.

The people also found that commerce made friends where religion made enemies, and that religious zeal was utterly incompatible with peace between nations or individuals.

Is it possible that St. Paul was inspired of God, when he said: "Let the women learn in silence, with all subjection."—"Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man?

Lewis Meggleton had given himself out as the last and the greatest of the prophets, having power to save or damn.

The truth is, that what is called religion is necessarily inconsistent with free thought. A believer is a bird in a cage, a Freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.

Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

But Margot romanticized uprisings of people in distant lands. She didn't judge brown rapists and torturers by the same standards she would have applied to white men who drowned children for being the wrong religion. She believed, I think, like Suhrawardy, that 'bloodshed and disorder are not necessarily evil in themselves, if resorted to for a noble cause.

I've simply always lacked even the slightest religious impulse- when people talk about their faith, I can't connect with what they're talking about. This isn't a decision I came to, or a deep belief or principle; I'm just religion-deaf, the way tone-deaf people hear sounds and not music. I suppose my religion is reading.

In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing that we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been damned. We shall be so carried away with the music of the harp that we shall not even hear the wail of father and mother. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature.

What has religion to do with facts? Nothing

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.