Quotes About Religions

Great empires require great gods and great religions.

Through his researches, we now know that the individual psyche is not just a product of personal experience. It also has a pre-personal or transpersonal dimension which is manifested in universal patterns and images such as are found in all the world's religions and mythologies.

I will tell you this only once. Homosexuals have been among the best warriors in our history, the berserkers of last resort. They were among our best priests and priestesses. Celibacy was no accident in religions. It is also no accident that adolescents make the best soldiers.

The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies--in any system which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.

They were doors large enough to have admitted an entire cathedral from one of the ancient religions. Passing through them was said to reduce a pilgrim's soul to motedom, sufficiently small that it could pass through the eye of a needle and enter heaven.

Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces particular survival adaptations in its prey which, through the circular operation of feedback, produce changes in the predator which again change the prey—etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. . . . Many powerful forces do the same thing. You can count religions among such forces.

Theosophy tries to bridge the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity by pointing to the fundamental spiritual truths on which both religions are built, and by winning people to regard the Buddha and the Christ as fellow-laborers, and not as rivals.

There's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Qur'an, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bible, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bhaghavad Gita, or of the Book of Mormon, or of the other sacred texts of many of those religions.

Christianity and communism—which is to say, the most radical form of progressivism—are best understood as competing religions. Despite the self-delusions of theologically progressive Christians, so too are Christianity and the easygoing nihilism that characterizes progressivism in our post-Christian era.

Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past. At least in principle, if not always in fact, Christian doctrines could always be modified in the name of progress as demonstrated by reason.

las grandes amenazas -del empobrecimiento cultural- no provienen de la circulación global de mercancías, ideas, valores y símbolos culturales, sino de otro proceso que acompaña la globalización, como su sombra: el fortalecimiento de poderes locales que, en muchos casos, recuperan tradiciones culturales provincianas imbuidas de costumbres religiosas y fanatismos étnicos, intereses caciquiles o corporativos.

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.

wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life." Among other things, it reminds us to be humble, especially when we are sure we are right.

The concept of a supermind running the universe objectively, without compassion, is not new. Several religions are built around it. Thinking of God in these terms is not heresy but is advanced theology. The old-time God—the big bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky—is dead.

In East Asia generally, the notion of a Supreme Being, so essential to Western religions, is replaced by that of a Supreme State of Being , an impersonal perfection from which beings including man are separated only by delusion.

The great religions are also, and tragically, sources of ceaseless and unnecessary suffering. They are impediments to the grasp of reality needed to solve most social problems in the real world.

It is characteristic of all extension systems to be treated as distinct and separate from the user and to take on an identity of their own. Religions, philosophies, literature, and art illustrate this. After a time, the extended system accretes to itself a past and a history as well as a body of knowledge and skills that can be learned. Such systems can be studied and appreciated as entities in themselves.

Meanwhile, however, it is quite otherwise, meanwhile the comedy of existence has not yet become conscious of itself, meanwhile it is still the period of tragedy, the period of morals and religions.

Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.

There are Eastern religions that deny the reality of pain and suffering. They just try to wipe it away by saying it's all an illusion.

We belong to the camp of peace. We believe in peace. We believe that our one God wishes us to live in peace and wishes peace upon us, for these are His teachings to all the followers of the three great monotheistic religions, the Children of Abraham.

During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions.

While there I began to study the Asian religions as theories of mind.

Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the balance sheet. The doers are selling us potted plants and pizzas while the thinkers are a little bit unworldly. Religions both think and do.