Quotes About Religion

No Church has done more to fill the world with gloom than the Presbyterian. Its creed is frightful, hideous, and hellish. The Presbyterian God is the monster of monsters. He is an eternal executioner, jailer and turnkey. He will enjoy forever the shrieks of the lost — the wails of the damned. Hell is the festival of the Presbyterian God.

Men have labored diligently since the Fall to create a god of their own design, rather than submit themselves to their sovereign Creator.

Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.

Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.

At four o'clock I had one of those rare moments of happiness that I will remember all my life. I was sitting in front of Grandma's electric coal fire eating dripping toast and reading the News of the World. There was a good play on Radio Four about torturing in concentration camps. Grandma was asleep and the dog was being quiet. All at once I felt this dead good feeling. Perhaps I am turning religious. I think I have got it in me to be a Saint of some kind.

Punishment was meted out to the Christians (from AD64), a group of individuals given over to a new and harmful set of superstitions.

I sang along, but I could not help noticing that if you replaced the word Jesus with Great Leader, the content was not so different from some of the North Korean songs my students chanted several times each day. In both groups, singing was a joyful, collective ritual from which they took strength.

A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion, having never blushed behind a Turkish mask, nor pressed her feet in Chinese shoes, cannot brook any disabilities based on sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it.

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.

Warner records that the one female biological function permitted the Virgin in Christian faith was the act of nursing, yet by the sixteenth century contemporary prudishness and the upper-class custom of employing a wet nurse led to the virtual disappearance from art of the suckling Madonna

I wish I could just believe that God loves women, but the indoctrination I endured at the hands of well-meaning (or so I assume) Christians is difficult to erase. So I must search for believable (and scholarly) counterpoints because I don't quite trust myself. And until I can dissuade myself of the notion that God plays favorites, I cannot honestly sing or pray. Nor can I turn loose of this anger.

I don't worry much about offending. I have long since learned that my approach to religion will offend someone; I just don't want to hurt anyone.

None of that means my family's not spiritual. (Though what happened to Marvin has put me at odds with God these days.) To their credit, our parents have spent considerable time discussing the difference between Faith - the abiding belief in a Divine Creator that's as plain a part of a hundred-year-old oak tree, or a fiery red sunset, as the nose on your face - and Religion - which is the rigamarole that makes some folks figure they've got a leg up on everybody else.

The Pilgrims believed beer was an unalloyed good, a 'good creature of God.' People who did not drink were suspect and 'crank-brained.

If one group of people can exterminate another in the name of so-called religion, the world has no hope.

Soccer is the main sport in Mexico; it's very important for the Mexican people. It's their passion - it's their religion - and Mexican football was always one of the best in the world.

What gets in our way is history and culture and religion and economic conditions. It is part of the hypnosis of our social conditioning.

I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.

I don't do social media of any kind. If I did, I may as well join Scientology.

Socialism appeals to me. It's like imposed Christianity. You've got to share.

For too long, for way too long the Republican party has just been the party of 'no' that has always conceded things. They have let God out of our schools, they have let socialism creep into our country.

What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.

I haven't seen much socially redeeming about religion. I'm an atheist. I don't here want to get into the Hitchens- or Dawkins-style attack on religion. I was raised on that. It's boring.

Duplicity in matters of religion is not confined to Pakistan, but it hurts the most in societies where debate on religion is asphyxiated and preachers of hate have become keepers of faith.