Quotes About Religion

Christian kingdoms hate one another and are divided on how best to show their love for Jesus Christ. How mad, you think, to hate over how best to love.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls. - On Religion

Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical needs of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...

Since long ago all peoples have recognized that the world, apart from its physical meaning, also has a moral one. Yet everywhere the matter has only come to a vague consciousness, which, as it sought expression, clothed itself in all sorts of images and myths. There are religions.

Everywhere where detestable Islam has not yet driven out the ancient, profound religions of humanity with fire and sword, my ascetic results would have to fear the reproach of being trivial

What a bad conscience religion must have is to be judged by the fact that it is forbidden under pain of such severe punishment to mock it. - On Religion

Religions are like glow-worms: they need darkness in order to shine. A certain degree of general ignorance is the condition for the existence of any religion.

All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity.

Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother. - On Religion

In its death throes, we see religion clinging to morality, whose mother it would like to pretend to be. In vain! – genuine morality is dependent on no religion, although religion sanctions and thereby sustains it.

What I have here described with feeble tongue and only in terms, is no philosophical fable, invented by myself, and only of today; no, it was the enviable life of so many saints and beautiful souls among Christians, and still more among Hindus and Buddhists and also among the believers of other religions.

Aqueles demónios com aspecto humano, os escravocratas e comerciantes de escravos nos estados livres da América do Norte (que deveriam ser chamados de estados escravistas), são, em regra, anglicanos ortodoxos e devotos, que considerariam um grave pecado trabalhar aos domingos e que, contando com a sua obediência e com a sua ida assídua à igreja, entre outras coisas, esperam a salvação eterna.

Las religiones son como las luciérnagas, para brillar tienen necesidad de oscuridad

The Buddha, Eckhart and I all teach essentially the same, Eckhart within the bounds of his Christian mythology. In Buddhism, these ideas are not encumbered by any such mythology, and are thus simple and clear, to the extent that a religion can be clear. Complete clarity lies with me.

Paul's prediction about "the form of religion but denying the power" (2 Tim. 3:5) was being fulfilled.

We are not to be in bondage to rules, even spiritual ones. "If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law" (Gal. 5:18).

And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.

Coercing a woman out of a burka is as bad as coercing her into one. It's not about the burka. It's about the coercion.

It could be argued that it began long before Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into Kerala like tea from a teabag.

proposes Nazi-style purges of Indian Muslims.

Religion itself is a method of engaging the ultimate; the various religions are various methods of doing so; their histories are a record of the results of these efforts.

The concept of "the chosen people" is thus turned, in the plastic hands of Hinduism, into the "choosing people"—Hindus choose the gods they worship.