Quotes About Religious

O]f all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Generosity is a willingness to give, to open without philosophical or pious or religious motives, just simply doing what is required at any moment in any situation, not being afraid to receive anything.

However, he expressed a conviction that, in order to take root in the West, the dharma needed to be taught free from cultural trappings and religious fascination.

And we know that the period during which the influence of Christian theism was strongest, was the period when the intellectual life of civilised man was at its lowest, morality at its weakest, and the general outlook most hopeless. Religious control gave us heresy hunts, and Jew hunts, burnings for witchcraft, and magic in the place of medicine. It gave us the Inquisition and the auto da fé, the fires of Smithfield and the night of St. Bartholomew.

Irish bank, and of one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence that it has been brought to its climax in these pages, in the days of the public examination

one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence that it has been brought to its climax

For reconstructionists, tolerance is not a neutral concept that acknowledges equal validity of all religious belief before the law; instead, they speak of a "Christian tolerance" that permits equal treatment but not equal acceptance of all doctrine. Reconstructionists would not seek to regulate personal beliefs, but would regulate public actions and behavior.

However functional at the time, the idea of administering the state through religiously based communities strikes the contemporary observer as outmoded, the product of a different, more religious age. Yet, what then should the basis of identity be within the state? Ethnicity (language) or religion?

Note throughout all of this that it was the pope who called for all of these wars and campaigns over a nearly two-hundred-year period. The pope in effect inspired, directed, and commanded the political and military actions of European princes. We are hard put to find any parallel of purely religious authorities in Islam directing the actions of Muslim armies.

The teaching of Colossians 2:3-8 is unambiguous. ALL knowledge (note: not simply knowledge of "religious" matters is to be found in Christ.

My feeling is, the Pilgrims were asked to leave England. England was never funner than when the Pilgrims split, right? The people of England got a little tired of these dour, right-winged conservative psycho-Christians wearing all black, bumming people out, confusing everyone by wearing buckles on... their heads. "Is that tight enough for you, Cotton?" "Yea, verily.

The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, been co-opted by an American, religious version of the kingdom of the world. We have come to trust the power of the sword more than the power of the cross. We have become intoxicated with the Constantinian, nationalistic, violent mindset of imperialistic Christendom.5

Prior to postmodernism, it was all but impossible to claim that one was a cultural Christian, Jew, or Muslim. There was no such thing. Now, being culturally religious is a widely accepted stance.

All founders of religious or political creeds have established them solely because they were successful in inspiring crowds with those fanatical sentiments which have as result that men find their happiness in worship and obedience and are ready to lay down their lives for their idol.

We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon.

Gladstone's was neither the first nor the last of great minds to be led astray by religious fervor, but in the case of his Studies on Homer, his convictions took the particular unfortunate turn of trying to marry Homer's pagan pantheon with the Christian creed. ... The Times was not amused: "Perfectly honest in his intentions, he takes up a theory, and no matter how ridiculous it is in reality, he can make it appear respectable in argument. Too clever by half!

The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world's value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.

He would never swing the thurible before the tabernacle as priest. His destiny was to be elusive of social or religious orders. The wisdom of the priest's appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.

I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice

What's an ideologue?" "Someone who brings religious passion to a political abstraction only cretins could think up," he said. "When you meet one, flee his presence at all costs. He'll incinerate half the planet to save the other half and never understand his own motivations.

Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist and religious animus.

I wore a uniform to stand up for all rights and that means I don't pick or choose which I defend, whether it's for equality rights or women's rights. I've been consistent on that in my public life. I've also stood up for religious freedom, conscience rights of freedom of speech.

I am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.

Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.