Religion Quotations

Religion

From Wikiquote It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Religion is a word which refers to approaches to human spirituality which usually encompass a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth. It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.

See also Religiousness and Irreligiousness for additional quotations on religion.

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A

Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find. ~ Matthew Arnold

• "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." It's an oral history. It was passed down, word-of-mouth, father to son, from Adam to Seth, from Seth to Enos, from Enos to Cainan, for 40 generations, a growing, changing, story, it was handed down, word-of-mouth, father to son. Until Moses finally gets it down on lambskin. But lambskins wear out, and need to be recopied. Copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of an oral history passed down through 40 generations. From Hebrew it's translated into Arabic, from Arabic to Latin, from Latin to Greek, from Greek to Russian, from Russian to German, from German to an old form of English that you could not read. Through 400 years of evolution of the English language to the book we have today, which is: a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an oral history passed down through 40 generations. You can't put a grocery list through that many translations, copies, and re-telling, and not expect to have some big changes in the dinner menu when the kids make it back from Kroger's. And yet people are killing each other over this written word. Here's a tip: If you're killing someone in the name of God — you're missing the message.
  • Nick Annis in the preface to God is Good.

• The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.
  • Susan B. Anthony, in a defense of Elizabeth Cady Stanton against a motion to repudiate her Woman's Bible at a meeting of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association 1896 Convention, HWS, IV (1902), p. 263.

• Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.
  • Matthew Arnold, Progress, Stanza 10 (1867; revised from 1852 publication).

• Religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others.
  • Reza Aslan, in "From Islam, Pluralist Democracies Will Surely Grow" in The Chronicle of Higher Education (11 March 2005).

B

The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. ~ Joel Barlow At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love. ~ Ray Bradbury All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown in myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own. ~ Richard Francis Burton

• There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays. Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature (1625).

• The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays. Of Vicissitude of Things (1625).

• All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers.
  • Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871).

• The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.
  • Joel Barlow, in the Treaty of Tripoli, arranged during the presidential term of George Washington, and signed by President John Adams (1796).

• One's religion is whatever he is most interested in.
  • J.M. Barrie The Twelve-Pound Look (1910).

• Men use religion just as they use buoys and life-preservers; they do not intend to navigate the vessel with them, but they keep just enough of them on hand to float into a safe harbor when a storm comes up and the vessel is shipwrecked; and it is only then that they intend to use them. I tell you, you will find air-holes in all such life-preservers as that.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, 595 Pulpit Pungencies (1866) evening sermon, 12 June 1859.

• By religion I do not mean outward things, but inward states, I mean perfected manhood. I mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of the divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and confidence, and trust.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, The sermons of Henry Ward Beecher: in Plymouth church, Brooklyn (1874).

• Religio peperit divitias et filia devoravit matrem.
  • Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother.
  • Saying of Bernard of Clairvaux. Religio censum peperit, sed filia matri caussa suæ leti perniti osa fuit. See Reusner's Ænigmatographia. Ed. 2. 1602, Part I. Page 361. Heading of an epigram ascribed to Henricus Meibomius.

• The primary epiphenomenona of any religion's foundation are the production and flourishment of hypocrisy, megalomania and psychopathy, and the first casualties of a religion's establishment are the intentions of its founder.
  • Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004).

• Am I my brother's keeper?
  • The Bible, Genesis 4:9.

• Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
  • The Bible, James 1:27 (New International Version)

• Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

• The British finally seem to have taken to heart words attributed to an anonymous British elder statesman in the 19th century: We must preserve the Church of England. It's our only defense against real religion.
  • Rob Blackhurst, in "Britain's Unholy War Over Christmas" in The International Herald Tribune (23 December 2006).

• In short, in whatever light we view religion, it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of Majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature; the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious emotion.
  • Hugh Blair, The Works: Sermons (1820) Sermon XIV "On the Mixture of Joy and Fear in Religion".

• The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior. It is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal superstition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.
  • Hugh Blair, The Works: Sermons (1820) Sermon X "On the Duties of the Young".

• I went to the Garden of Love And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

  And The Gates of this Chapel were shut, And "Thou Shalt Not" writ over the door...

  And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys & desires.

  • William Blake, The Garden of Love (1866).

• Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'âme des dévots?
  • Can such bitterness enter into the heart of the devout?
  • Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Le Lutrin (1683), I, 12.

• No mere man since the Fall, is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments.
  • Book of Common Prayer, Shorter Catechism.

• At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.
  • Ray Bradbury, as quoted in "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, CNN : Living (2 August 2010), p. 1.

• You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of an eye for an eye, a life for a life, which is known throughout the universe for its… stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision; but nobody's paid much attention to them, not even the Buddhists or the Christians.
  • Gene Brewer and Charles Leavitt, lines for the character "prot" in K-PAX.

• Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thine infinity; So surely anchored on The steadfast Rock of immortality.
  • Emily Brontë, No Coward Soul Is Mine (1848).

• Curva trahit mites, pars pungit acuta rebelles.
  • The crooked end obedient spirits draws, The pointed, those rebels who spurn at Christian laws.
  • Thomas Broughton, Dictionary of all Religions. (1756). The croisier is pointed at one end and crooked at the other. "Curva trahit, quos virga regit, pars ultima pungit"; is the Motto on the Episcopal staff said to be preserved at Toulouse.

• Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici. XXV.

• Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so Who art not missed by any that entreat.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Comfort.

• But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance, it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
  • Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America (1774).

• The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
  • Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) Preface. Vol. I. p. 7.

• The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
  • Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

• People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion. — "What religion?" — the Earl said, "Men of sense never tell it."
  • Gilbert Burnet, History of his Own Times. Vol. I, Book I. Sec. 96. Footnote by Onslow, referring to Earl of Shaftesbury.

• An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended!
  • Robert Burns, Epistle to a Young Friend.

• G__ knows I'm no the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be, Just for a screen.
  • Robert Burns, Epistle to Rev. John M'Math, Stanza 8.

• All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strewen In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.
  • Richard Francis Burton, in The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Section VI.

• One religion is as true as another.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Book III. Sec. IV. Memb. 2. Subsec. 1.

• It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live were only to graze.… Without this, the beauties of the world are but splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of existence profitless and unadulterated miseries.
  • Horace Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life (1859) ch. XI, "Obligation a Privilege" pp. 221-222.

• What but the mighty mastership of religion has ever led a people up through civil wars and revolutions into a regenerated order and liberty? What has planted colonies for a great history but religion? The most august and beautiful structures of the world have been temples of religion; crystallizations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents more or less directly the fruitfulness and creativeness of religious talents.
  • Horace Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life (1859) ch. IX, "Extirpated by Disguise" p. 170.

• As if Religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 205.

• Synods are mystical Bear-gardens, Where Elders, Deputies, Church-wardens, And other Members of the Court, Manage the Babylonish sport.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto III, line 1,095.

• So 'ere the storm of war broke out, Religion spawn'd a various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts, That first run all religion down, And after every swarm its own.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto II, line 7.

• There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 34.

C

• Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances — these are necessary to religion — no man can be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is, mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life.
  • John Caird, Religion in Common Life (1856) pp. 24-25.

• Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. "The world passes away!" The things seen are temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties — the whole "unprofitable stir and fever of the world" — will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things; it finds in them the seeds of immortality.
  • John Caird, Religion in Common Life (1856) pp. 55-56.

• His religion at best is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a great Perhaps".
  • Thomas Carlyle, Essays (1828) "Burns".

• On the whole we must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Essays. Voltaire.

• It seems to me a great truth … that human things can not stand on selfishness, mechanical utilities, economics, and law-courts; that if there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable, and doomed to ruin.
  • Thomas Carlyle, letter to Thomas Chalmers (11 October 1841).

• The world is full, also, of great traditional books tracing the history of man (but focused narrowly on the local group) from the age of mythological beginnings, through periods of increasing plausibility, to a time almost within memory, when the chronicles begin to carry the record, with a show of rational factuality, to the present. Furthermore, just as all primitive mythologies serve to validate the customs, systems of sentiments, and political aims of their respective local groups, so do these great traditional books. On the surface they may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been conceived as myths: poetic readings of the mysteries of life from a certain interested point of view. But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is — to say the least — to miss the point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt.
  • Joseph Campbell, in Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God (1964).

• The church has been so harsh with heretics only because she deemed that there is no worse enemy than a child who has gone astray. But the record of Gnostic effronteries and the persistence of Manichean currents have contributed more to the construction of orthodox dogma than all the prayers.
  • Albert Camus, in "Absurd Creation" in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), as translated by Justin O'Brien,Vantage International, 1991, ISBN 0-679-73373-6, p. 113.

• Religion… is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart.
  • Richard Cecil, The works of the Rev. Richard Cecil vol. 3 (1825) "On Scriptures", p. 359.

• If you are seeking the comforts of religion rather than the glory of our Lord, you are on the wrong track. The Comforter meets us unsought in the path of duty. There is something in religion, when rightly comprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are "the constant hectic of a fool."
  • Richard Cecil, The works of the Rev. Richard Cecil vol. 3 (1825) p. 290.

• O Heavenly Father! convert my religion from a name to a principle. Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee.
  • Thomas Chalmers, diary entry, 14 March 1812.

• The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.
  • Thomas Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans vol. 1 (1837) pp. 29-30.

• Religion is faith in an Infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that Rectitude which conscience commands us to seek, This conviction gives a Divine Sanction to duty.
  • William Ellery Channing, The Perfect Life (1873) "The Perfecting Power of Religion".

• The true office of religion is to bring out the whole nature of man in harmonious activity…
  • William Ellery Channing, The Perfect Life (1873) "The Perfecting Power of Religion".

• It was religion which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights which opened men's eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought.
  • William Ellery Channing, Self-Culture (1838).

• I realized that ritual will always mean throwing away something; Destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.
  • G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles. Secret of a Train.

• The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown To saints whose lives are better than his own, Shall spare thy crimes; and Wit, who never once Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce.
  • Charles Churchill, Epistle to Hogarth (July 1763) l. 25.

• Deos placatos pictas efficiet et sanctitas.
  • Piety and holiness of life will propitiate the gods.
  • Cicero, De Officiis. II. 3.

• Res sacros non modo manibus attingi, sed ne cogitatione quidem violari fas fuit.
  • Things sacred should not only be untouched with the hands, but unviolated in thought.
  • Cicero, Orationes in Verrem. II. 4. 45.

• Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.
  • Arthur C. Clarke, The Onion AV Club interview (18th February 2004).

• I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.
  • John Duke Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, Regina v. Bradlaugh and others (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

• Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fring'd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where is it?"
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Fears in Solitude. ll. 81-86 (1798).

• Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the Heart, the Moral Nature, was the Beginning and the End; and that Truth, Knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1825).

• Life and the Universe show spontaneity; Down with ridiculous notions of Deity! Churches and creeds are lost in the mists; Truth must be sought with the Positivists.
  • Mortimer Collins, The Positivists.

• Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but — live for it.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Volume I (1820), #25.

• The best thing about religion is that it's so transparently absurd it can't possibly last forever. I'm convinced it will only take a small shift in human consciousness for it to be laughed off the planet, and I hope I'm still around when that happens.
  • Pat Condell, in Laughing religion off the planet - an interview with Pat Condell (27 February 2008).

• There are only two religions: Roman Catholicism, which is wrong, and the rest, which don't matter.
  • Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget (1953)

• Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, Needs only to be seen to be admired.
  • William Cowper, Expostulation, line 492.

• The Cross! There, and there only (though the deist rave, And atheist, if Earth bears so base a slave); There and there only, is the power to save.
  • William Cowper, The Progress of Error, line 613.

• Religion does not censure or exclude Unnumbered pleasures, harmlessly pursued.
  • William Cowper, Retirement, line 782.

• Pity! Religion has so seldom found A skilful guide into poetic ground! The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray And every muse attend her in her way.
  • William Cowper, Table Talk, line 688.

D

• Sacred religion! Mother of Form and Fear!
  • Samuel Daniel, Musophilus, Stanza 47.

• In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.
  • Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy", p. 266 ISBN 978-0-393-31755-8.

• "As for that," said Waldenshare, "sensible men are all of the same religion." "Pray what is that?" inquired the Prince. "Sensible men never tell."
  • Benjamin Disraeli, Endymion (1880), Chapter LXXXI. Borrowed from Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Lord Shaftesbury).

• Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to Him, and of our dependence upon Him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to Him.
  • Philip Doddridge, in The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.

• Our love, when it is without counting the cost, leads the other toward God. Our love makes straight the paths of the Lord.
  • Catherine Doherty in "Living The Little Mandate" in Unfinished Pilgrimage: The Little Mandate and How It Came to Be.

• Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
  • William O. Douglas, in United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944).

• You can and you can't — You shall and you shan't — You will and you won't — And you will be damned if you do — And you will be damned if you don't.
  • Lorenzo Dow "Crazy Dow", defining Calvinism in Reflections on the Love of God.

• Gardez-vous bien de lui les jours qu'il communie.
  • Beware of him the days that he takes Communion.
  • Jacques Du Lorens, Satires. I.

• L'institut des Jesuites est une épée dont la poigée est à Rome et la pointe partout.
  • The Order of Jesuits is a sword whose handle is at Rome and whose point is everywhere.
  • André M. J. Dupin, Procès de tendance (1825). Quoted by him as found in a letter to Mlle. Voland from Abbé Raynal. Rousseau quotes it from D'Aubigné–Anti-Coton, who ascribes it to the saying of the Society of Jesus which is "a sword, the blade of which is in France, and the handle in Rome."

E

If the believers of the present-day religions would earnestly try to think and act in the spirit of the founders of these religions then no hostility on the basis of religion would exist among the followers of the different faiths. ~ Albert Einstein I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.
  • Albert Einstein, in response to atheist, Alfred Kerr in the winter 1927, who after deriding ideas of God and religion at a dinner party in the home of the publisher Samuel Fischer, had queried him "I hear that you are supposed to be deeply religious" as quoted in The Diary of a Cosmopolitan (1971) by H. G. Kessler.

• For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted in Has Science Discovered God? : A Symposium of Modern Scientific Opinion (1931) by Edward Howe Cotton, p. 101.

• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force. The essential unity of ecclesiastical and secular institutions was lost during the 19th century, to the point of senseless hostility. Yet there was never any doubt as to the striving for culture. No one doubted the sacredness of the goal. It was the approach that was disputed.
  • Albert Einstein, "Moral Decay" (1937); Later published in Out of My Later Years (1950).

• While religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. There are pessimists who hold that such a state of affairs is necessarily inherent in human nature; it is those who propound such views that are the enemies of true religion, for they imply thereby that religious teachings are Utopian ideals and unsuited to afford guidance in human affairs. The study of the social patterns in certain so-called primitive cultures, however, seems to have made it sufficiently evident that such a defeatist view is wholly unwarranted.
  • Albert Einstein, in "Religion and Science: Irreconcilable?" in The Christian Register (June 1948); republished in Ideas and Opinions (1954).

• I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
  • Albert Einstein, in a letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997).

• A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of piece of mind.
  • Albert Einstein, in "a letter to a distraught father who had lost his young son and had asked Einstein for some comforting words" (12 February 1950), quoted in The New Quotable Einstein (2005) by Alice Calaprice, p. 206.

• I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.
  • Albert Einstein, in letter to Maurice Solovine, (1 January 1951) [Einstein Archive 21-174]; published in Letters to Solovine (1993).

• I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
  • Albert Einstein, in a letter to an atheist (1954) as quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979) edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman.

• I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted in The Private Albert Einstein (1992) by Peter A. Bucky and Allen G. Weakland, p. 86.

• I can understand your aversion to the use of the term "religion" to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than "religious" for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion by Arnold V. Lesikar.

• I do not find that the age or country makes the least difference; no, nor the language the actors spoke, nor the religion which they professed whether Arab in the desert or Frenchman in the Academy, I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883), The Preacher, p. 215.

• I like the church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Problem", Poems (1847), Stanza 1.

• In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, as quoted in Jennifer Leigh Selig, Thinking Outside The Church : 110 Ways to Connect with Your Spiritual Nature (2004), p. 53.

F

• Die Theologie ist die Anthropologie.
  • Theology is Anthropology.
  • Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity ["Wesen des Christenthums"], Preface to the 2nd Ed. (1843).

• Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.
  • Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1841).

• Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
  • Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1915 - 1917).

• A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.
  • Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921).

• The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin.
  • Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents(1931).

• Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. ... If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.
  • Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1939).

• There are at bottom but two possible religions — that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe.
  • James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. Calvinism, p. 20.

• Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.
  • James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. Sea Studies.

• But our captain counts the image of God — nevertheless his image — cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven.
  • Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State (1642), The Good Sea-Captain. Maxim 5.

• Indeed, a little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.
  • Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State (1642), The True Church Antiquary, Maxim 1.

• Religion is the best armour in the world, but the worst cloak.
  • Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732), line 4011.

G

• I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
  • Galileo Galilei, in Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615).

• And when we take our last remove, I fear that we shall find that a great deal which we call religion, and which we were at the trouble of lugging about with us through our whole pilgrimage, is perfectly worthless, fit only to be burned…
  • William Goodell, Forty Years in the Turkish Empire. Or, Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell (1876).

H

• We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Marble Faun, Book, II, Ch. VII.

• From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand; From many an ancient river, From many a palmy plain, They call us to deliver Their land from error's chain.
  • Reginald Heber, Missionary Hymn (1819).

• For the men that history enshrines on her immortal pages, the men whose memories are embalmed in the hearts of their fellows for all ages, were men who placed unfaltering trust in the loftiest convictions of the soul, and consecrated life and death to their realization.
  • Isaac Hecker, Aspirations of Nature (1857) ch. 2, p. 19.

• Religion, therefore, is the answer to that cry of Reason which nothing can silence, that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet, that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply.
  • Isaac Hecker, Aspirations of Nature (1857) ch. 3, p. 24.

• There is no use disguising the fact, our religious needs are the deepest. There is no peace until they are satisfied and contented. The attempt to stifle them is in vain. If their cry be drowned by the noise of the world, they do not cease to exist. In some unexpected moment they will break through with redoubled energy. They must be answered.
  • Isaac Hecker, Aspirations of Nature (1857) ch. 6, p. 38.

• It is the very nature and essence of religion to raise men, peoples, and nations, above the common level of life, to break through its ordinary bounds, and express itself in a thousand ways, in poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and in every other form of ideal expression. The splendid monuments of the genius and greatness of by-gone ages are the monuments inspired by their religion.
  • Isaac Hecker, Aspirations of Nature (1857) ch. 8, p. 46.

• Science embraces facts and debates opinion; religion embraces opinion and debates the facts.
  • Tom Heehler, The Well-Spoken Thesaurus

• Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything — just give him time to rationalize it. Forgive me for being blunt.
  • Robert Heinlein, in Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984).

• La couronne vaut bien une messe (Paris vaut bien une messe.
  • The crown, (or Paris), is well worth a mass.
  • Attributed to Henry IV.

• Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and half-heartedness of the professors of it.
  • Matthew Henry, An Exposition of All the Books of the Old and New Testaments, vol. 2 (1804) p. 482.

• Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand.
  • George Herbert, The Temple (1633), The Church Militant, line 235.

• Dresse and undresse thy soul: mark the decay And growth of it: if, with thy watch, that too Be down, then winde up both: since we shall be Most surely judged, make thy accounts agree.
  • George Herbert, The Temple (1633), Church Porch, Stanza 76.

• My Fathers and Brethren, this is never to be forgotten that New England is originally a plantation of religion, not a plantation of trade.
  • John Higginson, Election Sermon. The Cause of God and His People in New England. May 27, 1663.

• It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.
  • Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1926), Ralph Mannheim translation (1943), p. 436.

• Is religion one of the fine arts, that it should consist in going to meeting in good clothes every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night and morning? Is there every thing to receive, and nothing to give? Are we so literally a flock that we have nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary?
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs (1860) p. 295.

• Religion may enter a pothouse as a minister of good, but it may not lay aside its dignity to argue its rights and claims there. The moment that it does this it is shorn of its power.
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs (1860) p. 242.

• There are men who stalk about the world gloomy and stiff and severe — self-righteous embodiments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of peace and good-will to all mankind — the religion of love and hope and joy, the religion that bathes the universal human soul in the light of paternal love, and opens to mankind the gates of immortality — is a religion of terror — men guilty of misrepresenting Christ to the world, and doing incalculable damage to His cause, yet who find it in them to rebuke the careless laughter that bubbles up from a maiden's heart that God has filled with life and gladness.
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, Gold-foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs (1860) pp. 184-185.

• No solemn, sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious — Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
  • Thomas Hood, Ode to Rae Wilson.

• Remove from the history of the past all those actions which have either sprung directly from the religious nature of man, or been modified by it, and you have the history of another world and of another race.
  • Mark Hopkins, Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (1846) Lecture II, p. 49.

• Who ever heard of a devout deist? Who ever heard of one who was willing to spend his life in missionary labor for the good of others? It is not according to the constitution of the mind that such a system should awaken the affections. And what is true of this system is true of every false system. All such systems leave the heart cold, and, accordingly, exert very little genuine transforming power over the life.
  • Mark Hopkins, Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (1846) Lecture V, p. 156.

• A religion that never suffices to govern a man, will never suffice to save him; that that which does not distinguish him from a sinful world, will never distinguish him from a perishing world.
  • John Howe, The works of the Rev. John Howe vol. 2 (1835) p. 798.

• The canon of the [sharia] and the Church, closely linked with the laws of the bourgeosie, treated women as a commodity, a thing to be bought and sold by the male... Just as the bourgeosie had made the worker into its proletarian, so had the savage ancient canons of the [shariah], the Church, feudalism and the bourgeosie, reduced woman to the proletariat of the man.
  • Enver Hoxha (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London), ISBN 0701129700.

• Should all the banks of Europe crash, The bank of England smash, Bring all your notes to Zion's bank, You're sure to get your cash.
  • Henry Hoyt, Zion's Bank, or Bible Promises Secured to all Believers. Pub. in Boston, 1857. Probably a reprint of English origin.

I

• I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887).

• Who is a worshiper? What is prayer? What is real religion? Let me answer these questions. Good, honest, faithful work, is worship.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887).

• I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll, in discussion with Rev. Henry M. Field on Faith and Agnosticism, quoted in Vol. VI of Farrell's edition of his works; also in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922) edited by Kate Louise Roberts, p. 663.

• My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to help make others so.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll, on the title page of Vol. XII of Farrell's edition of his works.

J

• I envy them, those monks of old Their books they read, and their beads they told.
  • G. P. R. James, The Monks of Old.

• Whoever saith, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire
  • Jesus, The Bible, Matthew 5:22 (King James Version).

• I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged.
  • Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Mrs. H. Harrison Smith (1816).

• Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their religious differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
  • Samuel Johnson, Boswell's Life. Ch. V. 1763.

• To be of no Church is dangerous.
  • Samuel Johnson, Life of Milton.

• A little is fine, but the minute you start believing that you've picked the only right one out of the 4,200 or so on offer, you need to get a grip on yourself. Once you start thinking that it's okay to hate someone that chose one of the 4,199 others... snap out of it.
  • Arthur M. Jolly, in "The Questionnaire" (2010).

• We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do. We do not want that. We may quarrel with men about things on earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.
  • Chief Joseph, quoted in The wisdom of the Native Americans (1999) by Kent Nerburn.

K

• Religion is hate, religion is fear, religion is war, religion is rape, religion's obscene, religion's a whore.
  • Kerry King of Slayer, in "Cult" on Christ Illusion (2006).

L

• All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.
  • Cathy Ladman, quoted in The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins, "The Roots of Religion", p. 167.

• The word religion is extremely rare in the New Testament or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practises to which we give the collective name of religion are themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbor in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about religion; he hasn't the time. Religion is what we (or he himself at a later moment) call his activity from the outside.
  • C. S. Lewis in "Lilies that Fester" in The Twentieth Century (April 1955).

• Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (1847), Part II. V, line 35.

• Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
  • James Russell Lowell, Among My Books. New England Two Centuries Ago.

• God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
  • James Russell Lowell, Bibliolatres.

• But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming, And cared (shall I say?) not a d—n for their damning; So they first read him out of their church and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it.
  • James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics, line 876.

• Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!
  • Translated: How many evils has religion caused!
  • Lucretius, De Rerum Natura. I. 102.

• Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the way of the Sacramentarians, nor sat in the seat of the Zwinglians, nor followed the Council of the Zurichers.
  • Martin Luther, Parody of First Psalm.

M

• The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England (1849-1861), Vol. I. Ch. II.

• To judge religion we must have it—not stare at it from the bottom of a seeming interminable ladder
  • George Macdonald, Warlock o' Glenwarlock ch 18.

• Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike.
  • Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture "Galatians".

• Religion to be permanently influential must be intelligent.
  • Elias Lyman Magoon, Proverbs for the People (1849) ch. 1, p. 16.

• I never really hated a one true God, but the God of the people I hated.
  • Marilyn Manson, Disposable Teens (2000).

• To rely on intellectual methods for the direct advance of devout thought is to mistake philosophy for religion… Who does not know, out of his own heart, that he never was reasoned into holy wonder, love, or reverence? and who can fail to observe that there is no fixed proportion between force of understanding and clearness or depth of religion?
  • James Martineau, Hours of Thoughts on Sacred Things Vol. 2 (1879) "The Way of Rememberance" p. 96.

• In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.
  • Rollo May, in Man's Search for Himself (1953), p. 166.

• We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.
  • Rollo May, in Man's Search for Himself (1953), p. 180.

• While religion, contrary to the common notion, implies, in certain cases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent, infidelity, which claims to despise credulity, is sometimes swift to it.
  • Herman Melville, in The Confidence-Man (1857).

• The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride.
  • H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series (1917).

• We look at gorgeous churches and synagogues, but now they are only 10% to 15% filled. Those who are there are old; pretty soon they will go to the grave. Then there will be no one. This is true for all religions.
  • Sun Myung Moon The Reappearance of the Second Coming and the Completed Testament Era (10 January 1993) Belvedere International Training Center.

N

• The religion of some people is constrained; they are like people who use the cold bath—not for pleasure, but necessity, and for their health, they go in with reluctance, and is glad when they get out; but religion to a true believer is like water to a fish; it is his element, he lives in it, and could not live out of it.
  • John Newton, letter, 24 January 1800, The Aged Pilgrim's Triumph Over Sin and the Grave (1825), p. 158.

• Even that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that gods, too, thus philosophy, seems to me a novelty that is far from innocuous and might arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886).

O

• Ancient [Graeco-Roman] religion was tolerant and non-sectarian. In this it was unlike ancient philosophy. The adherents of Epicurean and Stoic philosophy fought long and acrimonious feuds, as one can see by reading Lucretius. The reason for this difference between religion and philosophy is that philosophers maintained various factual propositions about the world—that it was made of 'breath' or atoms, that it was finite or infinite, and so on—whereas ancient religions only presupposed the existence of forces capable of being persuaded by prayer and sacrifice. Since Roman religion offered no dogmas about the universe, there was nothing for people to contradict or to argue about. Philosophers, on the other hand, had elaborate systems which they defended to the last detail with grotesque ingenuity.
  • R. M. Ogilvie, The Romans and Their Gods (1969), p. 3

• Expedit esse deos et, ut expedit, esse putemus.
  • The existence of the gods is expedient and, as it is expedient, let us assume it.
  • Ovid, The Art of Love (c. AD 2) I, 645

P

• Do they profess to have delighted us by telling us that they hold our soul to be only a little wind and smoke, especially by telling us this in a haughty and self-satisfied tone of voice? Is this a thing to say gaily? Is it not, on the contrary, a thing to say sadly, as the saddest thing in the world?
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1669), 194.

• Not believing in anything is also a religion.
  • Cesare Pavese, The house on the hill

• No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
  • William Penn, No Cross, No Crown (1682).

• It was a friar of orders grey Walked forth to tell his beads.
  • Thomas Percy, The Friar of Orders Grey (based on an older ballad).

• Religion, which true policy befriends, Design'd by God to serve man's noblest ends, Is by that old deceiver's subtle play Made the chief party in its own decay, And meets the eagle's destiny, whose breast Felt the same shaft which his own feathers drest.
  • Katherine Philips, On Controversies in Religion.

• The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.
  • Wendell Phillips, speech (18 December, 1859).

• We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.
  • William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, speech in the House of Lords (19 May 1772) The exact text was unrecorded, Edmund Burke reported this version in a speech (2 March, 1790) see Prior's Life of Burke. Ch. X. (1824).

• So upright Quakers please both man and God.
  • Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728; 1735; 1743), Book IV, line 208.

• To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines, Where slumber abbots purple as their wines.
  • Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728; 1735; 1743), Book IV, line 301.

• Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.
  • Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728; 1735; 1743), Book IV, line 649.

• For virtue's self may too much zeal be had; The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
  • Alexander Pope, To Murray, Epistle VI. of Horace, line 26.

• I think while zealots fast and frown, And fight for two or seven, That there are fifty roads to town, And rather more to Heaven.
  • Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Chant of Brazen Head, Stanza 8.

• The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
  • Psalms 14:1.

• Let a man be firmly principled in his religion, he may travel from the tropics to the poles, it will never catch cold on the journey.
  • William Morley Punshon, Lectures and Sermons (1877) "Daniel in Babylon" p. 8.

Q

• He that hath no cross deserves no crown.
  • Frances Quarles, Hadassa (1621).

R

• If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.
  • Spider Robinson, in "God Is An Iron" (1977).

• Ils ont les textes pour eux; disait-il, j'en suis faché pour les textes.
  • Translated: They have the texts in their favor; said he, so much the worse for the texts.
  • Pierre Paul Royer-Collard, Dictionnaire de Sciences Philosophiques (Paris 1851, vol. V) "Life of M. Royer Collard" p. 442.

• Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;]], but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
  • John Ruskin, Stones of Venice. Vol. I. Ch. II.

• I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
  • Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927).

• My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
  • Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930).

S

Faith: The opposite of dogmatism. ~ John Ralston Saul In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time… Upton Sinclair Jesus, as we know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with "temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death of a disturber of the peace. ~ Upton Sinclair

• I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar. I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.
  • Carl Sandburg, in "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter" in Chicago Poems (1916), p. 63.

• Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
  • John Ralston Saul, in The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994): "Faith".

• Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism (1890).

• Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet; so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.
  • John Selden, Table Talk. P. 157. (Ed. 1696).

• [Lord Shaftesbury said] "All wise men are of the same religion." Whereupon a lady in the room … demanded what that religion was. To whom Lord Shaftesbury straight replied, "Madam, wise men never tell."
  • Lord Shaftesbury, John Toland, Clidophorus. Ch. XIII.
    • Attributed to Samuel Rogers by Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological Difficulties. Attributed also to Franklin.

• I always thought It was both impious and unnatural That such immanity and bloody strife Should reign among professors of one faith.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, Act V, scene 1, line 11.

• In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene 2, line 77.

• The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.
  • John Campbell Shairp, Culture and Religion (1870) p. 14.

• They who seek religion for culture's sake are aesthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.
  • John Campbell Shairp, Culture and Religion (1870) pp. 62-63.

• But now I think the belief in a Divine education, open to each man and to all men, takes up into itself all that is true in the end proposed by culture, supplements, and perfects it.
  • John Campbell Shairp, Culture and Religion (1870) p. 131

• There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
  • George Bernard Shaw, in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol. II, preface (1898)

• Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can't see the quintessential equality of all the religions.
  • George Bernard Shaw in Getting Married (1908)

• The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, The cross leads generations on.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas (1821), line 237.

• Indeed, I am a free rider, but only in the freedom from one set of cultural traditions usually gathered under the umbrella of religion. But, like everyone else, I face judges that are in their own ways transcendent and powerful: family and friends, colleagues and peers, mentors and teachers, and society at large. My judges may be lowercased and occasionally deceivable, but they are transcendent of me as an individual, even if they are not transcendent of nature; as such, together, we all stand in a long pilgrim community struggling down the evoloutionary and historical ages trying to live and love and learn to temper our temptations and do the right thing. I may be free from God, but the god of nature holds me to her temple of judgment no less than her other creations. I stand before my maker and judge not in some distant and future ethereal world, but in the reality of this world, a world inhabited not by spiritual and supernatural ephemera, but by real people whose lives are directly affected by my actions, and whose actions directly affect my life.
  • Michael Shermer in The Science of Good and Evil (2004).

• In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with "temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common, except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil. But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church. He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman Empire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the greater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion.
  • Upton Sinclair, in The Profits of Religion : An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1918) Book Seven : The Church of the Social Revolution, "Christ and Caesar"

• Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source.
  • Upton Sinclair, in The Jungle, Ch. 31.

• Logic or so called intellectual reasoning have no real meaning in religious debates.
  • Judge Jussi Sippola, Helsinki district court, in the Halla-Aho trial on charges of incitement of an ethnic group and disturbing religious worship, 2009. [1].

• With many people, religion is merely a matter of words. So far as words go we do what we think right. But the words rarely lead to action, thought, and conduct, or to purity, goodness, and honesty. There is too much playing at religion, and too little of enthusiastic, hard work.
  • Samuel Smiles, Duty, With Illustrations of Courage, Patience & Endurance (1880).

• A Gay and flowery and heated imagination beware of; because the things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity — thou must commune with God.
  • Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 137.

• Men of the present time testify of heaven and hell, and have never seen either.
  • Joseph Smith Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 160.

• The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
  • Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 4:425.

• But meddle not with any man for his religion: all governments ought to permit every man to enjoy his religion unmolested. No man is authorized to take away life in consequence of difference of religion, which all laws and governments ought to tolerate and protect, right or wrong. Every man has a natural, and, in our country, a constitutional right to be a false prophet, as well as a true prophet. If I show, verily, that I have the truth of God, and show that ninety-nine out of every hundred professing religious ministers are false teachers, having no authority, while they pretend to hold the keys of God's kingdom on earth, and was to kill them because they are false teachers, it would deluge the whole world with blood.
  • Joseph Smith, History of the Church 6:304.

• No man's religion ever survives his morals.
  • Robert South, a sermon preached at Christ-Church, Oxon. (17 October 1675).

• The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677) Part II: On the Nature and Origin of the Mind.

• A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
  • Madame de Staël, Corinne (1807), Book X, Ch. V.

• Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.
  • Stanisław Leszczyński (King of Poland), Maxims. No. 36.

• One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Then, Angelo may verily " hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms; while, beneath, the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled!
  • Richard Salter Storrs, The Recognition of the Supernatural in Letters and in life (1881).

• What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
  • Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue I.

• He made it a part of his religion, never to say grace to his meat.
  • Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub, Section XI.

• We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
  • Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects. Collected by Pope and Swift; found in Spectator No. 459.

T

Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. … The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. ~ Nikola Tesla

• The way to judge of religion is by doing our duty; and theology is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we must first see, and then love; but here, on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts; and we shall then, see and perceive, and understand.
  • Jeremy Taylor, "A sermon preached to the University of Dublin", The whole works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor. Vol 6, (1839) Sermon VI, p. 379.

• Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole? For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.
  • Nikola Tesla, in "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy with Special References to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy" in Century Illustrated Magazine (June 1900).

• If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.
  • Kerry Wendell Thornley, in the Introduction to the 5th Edition of Principia Discordia.

• Honour your parents; worship the gods; hurt not animals.
  • Triptolemus, according to Porphyry (On Abstinence IV.22) From his traditional laws or precepts.

U

• None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much.
  • Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913).

V

• To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.
  • Swami Vivekananda, in Pearls of Wisdom (2008) edited by the Ramakrishna Mission.

W

• Once I journeyd far from home To the gate of holy Rome; There the Pope, for my offence, Bade me straight, in penance, thence Wandering onward, to attain The wondrous land that height Cokaigne.
  • Robert Wace, The Land of Cokaigne.

• When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I'll bid farewell to every fear, And wipe my weeping eyes.
  • Isaac Watts, Songs and Hymns, Book II. No. 65.

• Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to His throne.
  • Daniel Webster, speech at the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on the death of Jeremiah Mason (14 November 1848)

• Take care what you are about, for unless you base all this on religion, you are only making so many clever devils.
  • Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Philip Henry, Fifth Earl Stanhope, Notes of Conversation with the Duke of Wellington, 1831-1851 (1886). Talking about non-denominational education, often paraphrased as "Educate men without religion, and you make them but clever devils."

• The religion of the heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no belief, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth—the very demand of faith—were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.
  • Richard Whately, Bacon's Essays with Annotations by Richard Whately (1857).

• A legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony with God.
  • Ellen G. White, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing (1896), p. 53.

• The world has a thousand creeds, and never a one have I; Nor church of my own, though a million spires are pointing the way on high. But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me along like a river; And the lamp of my soul is alight with love, for life, and the world, and the Giver.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Heresy.

• So many gods, so many creeds— So many paths that wind and wind While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The World's Need.

• The Discordian Society, we repeat again, is not a complicated joke disguised as a new religion but really a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.
  • Robert Anton Wilson, in Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977), p. 103; paraphrases of this are sometimes attributed to Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger), one of the authors of Principia Discordia.

• Who God doth late and early pray More of his Grace than Gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a Religious Book or Friend.
  • Sir Henry Wotton, The Character of a Happy Life (1614), Stanza 5.

Y

• Religion's all. Descending from the skies To wretched man, the goddess in her left Holds out this world, and, in her right, the next.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-45), Night IV, line 550.

• But if man loses all, when life is lost, He lives a coward, or a fool expires. A daring infidel (and such there are, From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge, Or pure heroical defect of thought), Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-45), Night VII, line 199.

Z

Anon

• Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light.
  • Anonymous, "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song, recorded by many artists.

• Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
  • Anonymous "God's Gonna Cut You Down", traditional folk song.

• Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
  • Anonymous; quoted in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006) by Daniel C. Dennett, p. 17,ISBN 0-670-03472-X.

• Some people complain because God put thorns on roses, while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns.
  • Anonymous, in The Baptist Observer No. 7 - (1966).

Collections

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• You have no security for a man who has no religious principle.
  • Richard Cobden, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 503.

• Too much is said in these days about the aesthetics of religion and its sensibilities. Religion's home is in the conscience. Its watchword is the word "ought." Its highest joy is in doing God's will.
  • Theodore L. Cuyler, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 503.

• Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.
  • Jonathan Edwards, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 494.

• True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves; the faith which clings to Jesus in the darkest hour; the sanctity which shrinks from the approach of evil; the humility which lies low at the feet of the Redeemer, and washes them with tears; the love which welcomes every sacrifice; the cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which, rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion — a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime.
  • Richard Fuller, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 496.

• I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.
  • Attributed to Patrick Henry, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 496. The earliest attribution does not appear until 1823, nearly a quarter century after Henry's death in 1799, suggesting that this quote was falsely credited to Henry.

• Religion is the only metaphysics that the multitude can understand and adopt.
  • Joseph Joubert, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 504.

• How admirable is that religion which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.
  • Charles de Montesquieu, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 498.

• Religion gives to virtue the sweetest hopes, to unrepenting vice just alarms, to true repentance the most powerful consolations; but she endeavors above all things to inspire in men love, meekness, and piety.
  • Charles de Montesquieu, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 502.

• All noblest things are religious,— not temples and martyrdoms only, but the best books, pictures, poetry, statues, and music.
  • William Mountford, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 500.

• You have respect for religion! How vastly condescending! How deeply humble! The creature has a respect for the service of the Creator! A grasshopper deigns to acknowledge that it has a respect for the King of kings and Lord of lords! Verily a subject of congratulation for the universe! A worm crawling in the dust confesses to its fellow worm that it has some respect for the government of the high and mighty One that inhabiteth eternity.
  • William Augustus Muhlenberg, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 505.

• Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be loved to be known.
  • Blaise Pascal, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 496.

• Religious faith and purpose are the only certain safeguards against the growing perils of life. So far as there has been among educated men a decline of loyalty to Christ and His gospel, there has been a decline in those qualities which claim confidence and honor, which insure unblemished reputation, which minister to social well-being, and to the integrity and purity of public life.
  • A. P. Peabody, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 498.

• Other religions have risen and decayed; Christ's comes down the ages in the strength of youth, through the seas of popular commotion, like the Spirit of God on the face of the waters, through the storms of philosophy, like an apocalyptic angel, and through all the wilderness of human thought and action, like the pillar of fire before the camp of the Israelites.
  • Edward Thompson, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 500.

• There is a great deal too much in the world, of the "heavenly-mindedness" which expends itself in the contemplation of the joys of paradise, which performs no duty which it can shirk, and whose constant prayer is to be lifted in some overwhelming flood of Divine grace, and be carried, amidst the admiration of men and the jubilance of angels, to the very throne of God.
  • Henry Clay Trumbull, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 502.

The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904)

Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 219-220.

• It is the office of Judges to advance laws made for religion, according to their end, though the words be short and imperfect.
  • Hobart, C.J., Colt v. Glover (1614), Ld. Hob. Rep. 157.

• He that seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, his religion is vain.
  • Quoted by Lisle (Lord President), in Hewet's Case (1658), 5 How. St. Tr. 894.

• All persecution and oppression of weak consciences on the score of religious persuasions, are highly unjustifiable upon every principle of natural reason, civil liberty, or sound religion.
  • William Blackstone (1765), Commentaries Bk. IV., Ch. 4., p. 40.

• No laws can be of avail except in so far as they are founded on religion.
  • Park, J., Williams v. Paul (1830), 6 Bing. 653.

See also

Specific religions

• Agnosticism
• Atheism
• Buddhism
• Bahá'í Faith
• Christianity
• Deism
• Gnosticism

• Hinduism
• Islam
• Paganism
• Pandeism
• Panentheism
• Pantheism
• Polytheism

Religious texts

• List of religious texts
  • Bhagavad Gita
  • The Bible
  • Book of Mormon
  • Dhammapada
  • Gospel of Judas
  • Gospel of Thomas
  • Guru Granth Sahib
  • Mahābhārata
  • Panchatantra
  • Qur'an
  • Rigveda
  • Upanishad

Related concepts

• Consecration
• Denominationalism
• Divine law
• Faith
• God
• The Golden Rule
• Gospel
• Holiness
• Irreligiousness
• Last Judgment
• Miracle
• Missionaries
• Morality
• Nature - Nature and Religion
• Penance

• Preaching
• Redemption (theology)
• Regeneration (theology)
• Religiousness
• Religious conversion
• Repentance
• Resurrection
• Sabbath
• Sacrament
• Spirits
• Sunday school
• Theology
• Trials of faith
• Witchcraft

External links

Wikipedia has an article about: Religion Look up religion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary At Wikiversity you can learn about: God and Enlightenment#Philosophy of Religion

• Sacred Texts of many traditions
• Quotes against many religious traditions at Positive Atheism

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