Quotes About Religion

Indeed, no sultan or Muslim ruler in Islamic history ever kneeled to ask forgiveness before a grand mufti in the way that Henry IV was forced to do before the pope in 1077 in Canossa for challenging papal authority on some key secular matters. Henry VIII of England had to break with Rome entirely simply to secure the divorce he sought from his wife. Thus, intimate linkage between religious and state power marked most of Christian history in a way that has had no parallel in Islam.

Of the Muslim Bulgarians of the Volga the envoys reported there is no gladness among them; only sorrow and a great stench, and that their religion was undesirable due to its taboo against alcoholic beverages and pork; supposedly, Vladimir observed on that occasion: "Drinking is the joy of the Rus.

In the first place we can discount the tendency—which has been popular in Christendom—to over-estimate the extent of the use of force in the propagation of Islam. The show of adherence to the religion exacted by the Prophet's successors was limited to the performance of a small number of not very onerous external observances….

At the time of the conquest, Islam was meant to be a religion of the Arabs, a mark of caste unity and superiority. The Arabs had little missionary zeal. When conversions did occur, they were an embarrassment because they created status problems and led to claims for financial privileges.

ACTUALLY, in many senses there is no "Muslim world" at all, but rather many Muslim worlds, or many Muslim countries and different kinds of Muslims.

Take Islam out of the equation, and there's a very good chance you'd still find the Middle East at loggerheads with the West.

I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.

Death was far more certain than God.

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another name?

God loves you, they say in the churches, God is everything. People who believe that don't need admiration, they don't need to sleep with a man, they feel safe. But I can't invent a belief.

She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.

They are always saying God loves us. If that's love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.

Heaven was a word: hell was something he could trust.

When we get to the end of human beings we have to delude ourselves into a belief in God, like a gourmet who demands more complex sauces with his food.

As long as there is a Church, there will be little Torquemadas

Hullo, commandant,' I said, 'how's the General?' 'Which general?' he asked with a shy grin. 'Surely in the Caodaist faith,' I said, 'all generals are reconciled.

opio ni siquiera era entonces una droga nociva: el láudano era un sedante nada más. Y empleado por los pudientes, que los pobres no podían costearse. La religión es el válium del pobre, eso es

You don't believe in Him, do you?' 'No.' 'Things to me wouldn't make sense without Him.' 'They don't make sense to me with him.

You think God's more bitter than a woman!?

How many hundred million Gods do people believe in? Why, even a Roman Catholic believes in quite a different God when he's scared or happy or hungry.

What strange ideas people have about leprosy, doctor.'     'They learn it from the Bible. Like sex.'     'It's a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible

When we get to the end of human beings we have to delude ourselves into a belief in God.

Beware of formulas. If there's a God, he's not a God of formulas.

If I believed in any God at all, I should still hate the idea of confession. Kneeling in one of your boxes. Exposing myself to another man. You must excuse me, Father, but to me it seems morbid—unmanly even.