Quotes About Religion

Twas God the Word that spake it, He took the Bread and brake it; And what the Word did make it That I believe, and take it.

The real purpose of religion—at the popular level—was to unify the populace. Let everyone worship his favorite god in some niche or other, but let's all sacrifice at the same altar, climb the same steps, and wander through the same colonnades. Let the Jews have their god, by all means—who's stopping them?—and let us all have ours. And no provincial exclusiveness, please.

Cujus regio, ejus religio (Whose region it is, his is the religion).

As Hayek, Milton Friedman, and so many others pointed out, a state with power, means, and inclination to intervene so heavily in economic affairs is unlikely to stop there. In the process of all this, religion and civil society are crowded out, appreciation for their role languishes, and the groundwork is laid for more restrictions on them in the future.

it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine

And probably the half-unconscious rhapsody was a Fetichistic utterance in a Monotheistic falsetto; women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the systemized religion taught their race at later date.

Spoken like a Protestant.

I thank God for what happened," Verger said. "It was my salvation. Have you accepted Jesus, Miss Starling? Do you have faith?

Thanks to evolution, half of all Americans don't believe in evolution.

There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.

Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?

Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious. The great deeds of philosophers have been less the fruit of their intellect than of the direction of that intellect by an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, their single-heartedness and their self-denial, than to their logical acumen.

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.

Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is] religion; not allowed, superstition.

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster cruel vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging three headed beast like god one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes fools and hypocrites.

Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man.

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.

The constitution of most of the states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.

Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word Jesus Christ, so that it should read a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion. The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.

No government ought to be without censors: and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know, nor notice, it's sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.