Quotes About Religion

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is. Jean Anouilh, French dramatist and playwright

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. John Adams, U.S. President

Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope. Thomas Edison, American inventor

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.

You say there is but one way to worship the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Chief Red Jacket, Seneca Indian Chieftain

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. Mark Twain

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese and Spanish explorer

Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity? Arthur C. Clarke, author

All attempts at law, all religion, all ethical norms might be nothing more than attempts by the weak to restrain the strong. Then, within the law, arise the new strong, who subvert the law for their own ends of power and family interest, leaving the old strong outside their circle to pursue the waiting possibilities which they call crime. The weak, the cowardly, the decent ones, live between these groups.

Pathetic creatures on their knees... Tirelessly, naively repeating, Don't take our word for it! Alas, we're not all that logical. We say God–though in reality God is a person, a particular individual. We speak to him. We address him by name–he is the God of Abraham and Jacob. We treat him just like anybody else, like a personal being... So he's a whore?

TO WHOM LIFE IS AN EXPERIENCE TO BE CARRIED AS FAR AS POSSIBLE... I have not meant to express my thought but to help you clarify what you yourself think... You are not any more different from me than your right leg is from your left, but what joins us is THE SLEEP OF REASON—WHICH PRODUCES MONSTERS. —Theory of Religion

The opium of the people in the present world is perhaps not so much religion as it is accepted boredom. Such a world is at the mercy, it must be known, of those who provide at least the semblance of an escape from boredom. Human life aspires to the passions, and again encounters its exigencies.

The ritual of witchcraft is the ritual of an oppressed people.

on the question if he thought The Holy Ghost wrote the bible): I think The Holy Ghost has written all books.

Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice . . . . Truth breaks free, science is popularized, and religion totters; soon it will fall, in the course of centuries--that is, tomorrow. . . . In good time we shall only have to deal with reason. [ From Bizet, by William Dean. Colier Books, 1962 ]

I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion. . . . I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste.

The main thing for inner contentment is to be in a state of grace. And there is an artistic state of grace, for art is a kind of religion.

as the religious conflicts that animated the seventeenth century began to recede—Christian vs. Muslim; Catholic vs. Protestant—as the filthy wealth generated by slavery and dispossession accelerated, capitalism and profit became the new god, with its curia in the basilicas of Wall Street. This new religion had its own doctrine and theologies, with the logic of the market and its "efficient market theory" supplanting papal infallibility as the new North Star.

This new religion had its own doctrine and theologies, with the logic of the market and its "efficient market theory" supplanting papal infallibility as the new North Star.

Paperback, 160 Seiten, ISBN 978-3-937392-80-6

Eating and sleeping are not like loving and breathing. Washing is not like eating and sleeping. Believing is like breathing and loving. Religion can be believing, it can be like breathing, it can be like loving, it can be like eating or sleeping, it can be like washing, it can be something to fill up a place when someone has lost out of them a piece that it was not natural for them to have in them.

Spaniards and Americans are not like Europeans, they are not like Orientals, they have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world knows it, not even when they see it.