Quotes About Religious

if you and I do not stay Christian, if we give up whatever little voice and influence we have inside the larger Christian community, won't we be an answer to the misguided prayers of the religious company men and their followers, who want the rest of us gone?

If we find ourselves offended or disturbed by elements of the Ikon services, we might ask ourselves whether the disruption of a disturbing liturgy is necessary at times to arouse people like us from the religious slumbers that so frequently overtake us - like the bizarre characters in a Flannery O'Connor novel or short story, for example - to jolt us into the realization that we routinely tolerate the intolerable in the ways we speak of God.

The Empire functions beyond mere laws," Paulus continued. "An equally strong foundation is the network of alliances, favors, and religious propaganda. Beliefs are more powerful than facts.

when a culture needs wise spiritual guidance the most, all it gets from religious leaders is anxious condemnation and critique, along with a big dose of nostalgia for the lost golden age of the good old days. We

You were apt to go from one extreme to the other, in a truly pious environment; which is why ministers' sons in that day were more less expected to become loose livers when they grew up.

I believe in Spinoza's God, who revealed himself in the harmony of all being, not in the God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men"—a more subtle religious view embraced by

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in ancient Greece in the time of Homer , where there were gods of the sky and the Earth, the thunderstorm, the oceans and the underworld, fire and time and love and war; where every tree and meadow had its dryad and maenad.

Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined.

I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars... and the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light. The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

I don't reckon it's allowed, going round setting fire to people," said Adam. "Otherwise people'd be doin' it all the time." "It's all right if you're religious," said Brian reassuringly. "And it stops the witches from goin' to Hell, so I expect they'd be quite grateful if they understood it properly.

Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, poked at the ink in his inkwell. There was ice in it. Don't you even have a proper fire? said Hughnon Ridcully, High Priest of Blind Io and unofficial spokesman for the city's religious establishment. I mean, I'm not one for stuffy rooms, but it's freezing in here! Brisk, certainly, said Lord Vetinari. It's odd, but the ice isn't as dark as the rest of the ink. What causes that, do you think? Science, probably, said Hughnon vaguely.

To acknowledge that which we cannot see, to give definition to that which we don't know, to create divine order out of chaos, is the religious dance.

To acknowledge that which we cannot see, to give definition to that which we do not know, to create divine order out of chaos, is the religious dance.

I'm not into this judgmental, religious-right kind of thing.

Kansas is very religious, very Republican, and very straight-laced. I needed to get away from that.

Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem.

And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.

Nuns? They'd take one look at Barrons and decide the devil himself had come knockng. He not only looked dangerous, he emanated something that made even me feel like crossing myself sometimes, and I'm not religious.

he was trying to pave his way to heaven by plastering over his sins with the putty of religious zeal.

The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men.

When the priest says 'Lord, have mercy upon us', you do not respond 'Well, actually, why should he?' You intone dutifully, 'Christ, have mercy upon us.' In the same way, it would be very rude to respond to 'Ooh, isn't it cold?' with 'No, actually, it's quite mild.

our beliefs about economic growth are almost religious: personal in nature, political in consequence, privately held and little discussed.

As these students quickly discover, our beliefs about economic growth are almost religious: personal in nature, political in consequence, privately held and little discussed.

Christianity did introduce (...) a religious ideal, that of chastity (...). Thus a life of virginal consecration became open to women (through which they could become men's equals), providing a respected career opportunity for [nuns], single women and widows whose aspirations were not exhausted by or directed toward the role of mother or wife. [Introduction]