Quotes About Religion

Woman's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*

The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible.

When the awful time of reckoning comes, and the Jehovah God appears to demand why his command has been disobeyed, Adam endeavors to shield himself behind the gentle being he has declared to be so dear. 'The woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me and I did eat,' he whines—trying to shield himself at his wife's expense! Again we are amazed that upon such a story men have built up a theory of their superiority!

We can never know," Simon answered slowly. "God hides the future from man's eyes. We are forced to choose, not knowing. I have chosen Jesus.

I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.

I'm not particularly in favor of doctrine or creed, ordination, the elevation of holy texts, the institution of church, or, for that matter, Christianity. Like most religions, it has irreconcilable shortcomings and an unforgivable history. What I do favor is the attempt to make sense of things by living within a story. The Christian story, for good or ill, is my inheritance.

I loved reading the Dalai Lama's words: "My religion is loving-kindness." I realized that meant loving-kindness to everyone in my life: past, present, and future; and that meant loving-kindness to myself--in my pain, in my jealousy, in my fear.

She believed in God for the same reason anybody does: it is unbearable to think that our private thoughts are truly private.

Have you noticed that it is usually easier to judge than obey? Religious people are especially good at it. I tried

Conservative Romans thought, as have conservatives ever since, that there was something unmanly about overdeveloped aesthetic interests. They exemplified what might be called a 'muscular paganism' – a cast of religion that was to resurface, notably, in the nineteenth century, this time with Christ, not Jupiter, as its figurehead.

To be a religious man in the second century was to be a man of power, not of self-denial and a democratic spirit. (Hence, in part, the eventually perceived threat of the cult of Christ – and to others, of course, its attraction.)

The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.

My mother did not like Unitarians; she thought they were atheists who didn't want to be left out of the fun of Christmas

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic—you were made to feel guilty about everything.

William Jennings Bryan, told the president that "the basis of peace you propose is a new philosophy . . . that is, new to governments but as old as the Christian religion." It would put Wilson, Bryan averred, "among the Immortals.

The basic lesson of Indian history was already established. Material power like kingdoms, and kings, including Alexander the Great, comes and goes. But spiritual power, embodied in religion and caste and spiritual unity with Brahman, the changeless essence of the universe, lasts forever. Prime

Aquinas was unconvinced. The message of revealed religion contained in the Bible and church doctrine was meant for everyone, not just the rednecks among us. Likewise, every human being deserved to know the whole truth, not just a chosen elite. To fall for the notion of a "double truth" and argue there was one set of truths for reason and another for faith and never the two shall meet made nonsense of the idea of truth itself.

while Judaism and the Bible gave Christianity its weight and matter, its flesh and blood, Plato and Neoplatonism became its conceptual spine.

This time it was the Turks who were coming, fierce warriors from the steppes of Asia and followers of the religion of Muhammad. This time there were not enough soldiers, not enough cannons and ships, and nowhere to run. Nothing could save the Roman Empire's last capital.

What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?" One of Augustine's fellow Christian Africans, Tertullian, had posed that question in the third century. His meaning was all too clear. What do Plato, Aristotle, and the rest really tell us about wisdom and salvation, compared with the Bible and Christianity? More than a century later, Augustine bleakly answered: Not much.

Yet we should remember that the Covenanters were inspired less by their love of democracy than by their hatred of Satan.

He ripped aside the veil of respectability with which the ancients had clothed their traditional gods and goddesses and exposed the sordid reality underneath. What Socrates and Plato had started, the overthrow of the pagan pantheon, Origen's Christianity finished.

I cannot avoid believing," Luther mused, "that it was Satan himself who introduced the study of Aristotle.