Quotes About Religion

It may almost always be said both of sects and of individuals, who derive their morality from religion, that the better logicians they are, the worse moralists.

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics of religion.

Quem pode calcular o que se perde com a multidão de inteligências, a coexistirem com caracteres tímidos, que não se aventuram a incorporar-se em nenhuma corrente arrojada, vigorosa e independente de opinião, com o temor de que ela os leve a alguma coisa que possa ser taxada de irreligiosa ou imoral?

Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised Hebrews into the religion of the Roman empire. When their enemies said, "See how these Christians love one another" (a remark not likely to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier feeling of the meaning of their creed than they have ever had since.

What is boasted of at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry; and where there is the strong permanent leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people, which at all times abides in the middle classes of this country, it needs but little to provoke them into actively persecuting those whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of persecution.

When religion becomes organised, man ceases to be free. It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority and not violation of integrity.

The story is alternately hopeful and discouraging. Parish boundaries in the urban North served to foster communities of the sort admired by contemporary intellectuals at one historical moment, but proved unable to separate "community" from racial mythology at another. Parochial institutions strengthened individuals while occasionally becoming rallying points for bigotry. The extant literature on religion and race sidesteps this complexity.

If I cannot have a religion that will lead me to God, and place me en rapport with him, and unfold to my mind the principles of immortality and eternal life, I want nothing to do with it.

Peace is the gift of God. Do you want peace? Go to God. Do you want peace in your families? Go to God. Do you want peace to brood over your families? If you do, live your religion, and the very peace of God will dwell and abide with you, for that is where peace comes from, and it [does not] dwell anywhere else

School is a perfect place to turn science into religion, but it's the wrong place to learn science, for sure.

Few laymen understand that the synthesizing theories of Science are religious revelations in disguise.

I have a Christian worldview and so it shapes the way that I view issues. I don't apologize for that, and I don't think people of faith ought to shrink away from being in the public arena.

Religious types now feel tremendously energized because they see things swinging back their way. This is exactly the feeling that accompanies the Second Religiousness. Although it seems to suggest a new beginning, it is in fact spelling the end. It's the last hurrah before the total collapse of the civilization. The Roman empire embraced Christianity, and then it died! It was Christianity that assassinated it.

Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence.

Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.

In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.

The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.

I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.

Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar.

My hobby is extreme Catholic behavior -- BEFORE the Reformation.

Religion is sin when it makes God into something which we can handle.

None of us is exempt; all of us have to realize that religion always carries with it the danger that we will make God into the likeness of something on earth, and in doing so we will lose faith, and lose God. What

Let it be observed, that slovenliness is no part of religion; that neither this nor any text of Scripture, condemns neatness of apparel. Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. "Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness."

Holy solitaries' is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than holy adulterers. The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.