Quotes About Religion

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..." They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..." They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..." But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe.

The greatest threat to religion in any society is not persecution, but rather apathy born of irrelevance.

My faith means everything to me. God and I talk constantly.

My sisters have been baptized and my dad is a deacon at his church now. Sadly my mother passed away but what I can say is that the Jehovah Witnesses took very good care of her up until she died.

Fear has played a central strategic role in the Republican Party since at least World War II. It was Communism in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It was crime in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It was the fear of terrorism in the George W. Bush years. It was integration and immigration—people we do not know, religion we do not understand, and cultures we find alien—through much of our history.

The father spent his time talking and thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself an agnostic and was so absorbed in destroying the ideas of God that had crept into the minds of his neighbors that he never saw God manifesting himself in the little child that, half forgotten, lived here and there on the bounty of her dead mother's relatives.

I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented gods and prayed to them

I'm fascinated with all kinds of religion, but I'm not committed to any specific one.

Religion, while often offering a sense of trust in something bigger than ourselves, can also transmit the message of basic wrongness, especially around thoughts, bodies, and sexuality. When children are raised with a belief system that tells them, "If you think certain thoughts (primarily around sexuality) you have sinned," it's a setup for anxiety.

We spoke often of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who argued that the future of the Jewish people depended on the existence of a Jewish state, one bonded together not just by religion but by language and nationality. "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people. Then we will do the rest.

Human rights is a universal standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.

We must not enable anyone to impose his personal view regarding religion on others by force, oppression, or pressure.

If we all packed our suitcases and boarded planes, what would be left of our country? If we bowed our heads and stayed quietly at home, permitting them to say that Islam allowed the assassination of writers and the execution of teenagers, what would be left of our faith?

No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.

Religion is not any particular teaching. Religion is everywhere... We should forget all about some particular teaching; we should not ask which is good or bad. There should not be any particular teaching. Teaching is in each moment, in every existence. That is the true teaching.

Some people may say that Zen Buddhism is not religion. Maybe that is so, or maybe Zen Buddhism is religion before religion. So it might not be religion in the usual sense. But it is wonderful, and even though we do not study what it is intellectually, even though we do not have any cathedral or fancy ornaments, it is possible to appreciate our original nature. This is, I think, quite unusual.

True religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the heart of men.

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis

Judaism had been a religion of the father; Christianity became a religion of the son. The old God the Father fell back behind Christ; Christ, the Son, took his place, just as every son had hoped to do in primeval times.

At bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.

Religion is an illusion, and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.

Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.

In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.