Quotes About Religion

I envy your Christian God. He is three and He is one, He is dead and He is alive, He is everywhere and He is nowhere, and He demands that you worship Him, but claims nothing else is worthy of worship. There's room in those contradictions for a man to believe in anything or nothing, but

Descobri em minha longa vida que a maioria dos homens da Igreja prega os méritos da pobreza enquanto corre atrás da riqueza. Adoram dinheiro, e a Igreja atrai dinheiro como uma vela atrai mariposas.

The country's got drunk on God since then, and it don't make for happiness

If Joan was mad, all Christendom was mad too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial personages are every whit as mad as the people who think they see them. Luther, when he threw his inkhorn at the devil, was no more mad than any other Augustinian monk: he had a more vivid imagination, and hd perhaps eaten and slept less: that was all.

So far as I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

Sin is geographical.

I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing.

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense

Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God.

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

We shall be compelled to renounce the hope of finding philosophical proofs of religious beliefs. ...Hence, once more, the value of philosophy must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by those who study it.

Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

It is not rational arguments but emotions that cause belief in a future life.

From Pythagoras (whether by way of Socrates or not) Plato derived the Orphic elements in his philosophy: the religious trend, the belief in immortality, the other-worldliness, the priestly tone, and all that is involved in the simile of the cave; also his respect for mathematics, and his intimate intermingling of intellect and mysticism.

You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs.

What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.

The whole conception of 'sin' is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature.

The objections to religion are of two sorts -- intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.....Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion has gone hand-in-hand.