Quotes About Religion

The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives.

A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation.

WHAT is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion.

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge.

As a child I received instruction in both the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

Does there truly exist an insuperable contradiction between religion and science? Can religion be superseded by science?

A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole of what we call the universe. He experiences himself and his feelings as separated from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage [or delusion] is the sole object of real religion. Not nurturing the delusion but only overcoming it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace.

I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy.

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death.

A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole of what we call the universe. He experiences himself and his feelings as separated from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage [or delusion] is the sole object of real religion. Not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace.

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests'.

Para que sea eficaz el comportamiento ético de los hombres debe basarse en la compasión, la educación y en motivos sociales: no necesita de ninguna base religiosa. Sería muy triste por parte de la humanidad si sólo se refrenara por miedo al castigo y por esperanza de un premio después de la muerte.

It was the experience of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

Gott würfelt nicht.

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people

Organized religion has been of very little help in this crisis. In fact it has sometimes tended to make matters worse. The type of religion that emphasizes a supernatural world in such a way that one does not need to be concerned about the future of this world and all its peoples, offers a form of escape that makes it all the more difficult to solve our problems.

What is truth to the philosopher, would not be Truth, nor have the effect of Truth, to the peasant. The religion of the many must necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and reflective few, not so much in the essence as in its forms, not so much in the spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as the symbols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied.

Religion would, in many points, not be comprehended by the ignorant, nor consolatory to them, nor guiding and supporting for them. The doctrines of the Bible are often clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine. A perfectly pure faith, free from all extraneous admixtures, a system of noble theism and lofty morality, would find too little preparation for it in the common mind and heart.

On religious propaganda] Proclamations, gestures, articles of clothing, talismans, et cetera, become, through this propaganda, not symbolic of a belief but the demonstration of the belief itself.

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.