quotations about religion
The history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis ... mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed.
DAN BROWN
Angels & Demons
Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling?
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
Religion, as it has been generally taught, is anything but an elevating principle. It has been used to scare the child, and appal the adult. Men have been virtually taught to glorify God by flattery, rather than by becoming excellent and glorious themselves, and thus doing honor to their Maker. Our dependence on God has been so taught, as to extinguish the consciousness of our free nature and moral power. Religion, in one or another form, has always been an engine for crushing the human soul. But such is not the religion of Jesus Christ. If it were, it would deserve no respect.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but--live for it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Religion is the theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so--pardon the pun--so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist.
STEPHEN KING
Revival
Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice: everything is lost by failure to obey God's call.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
attributed, The God Delusion
Without religion no man can soar.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
For the existence of any religion there must be a belief that there is, somewhere in the universe, an intelligence of a higher order than man's, and that this intelligence possesses a power superior to what we call the ordinary powers of nature. And religion is simply the condition or adjustment of the relations between each individual human soul and that higher intelligence, call it by what name you will.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough.
BONO
interview, Larry King Weekend, December 1, 2002
No man is to make Religion for himself; but to receive it from God; and the teachers of the Church are not to make Religion for their hearers, but to show it only, as received from God.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I'm for decency -- period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out.
FRANK SINATRA
Playboy Magazine, February 1962
Religion is a sovereign balm to the penitent; but burning coals to the scoffer.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
The fact that I despise religion doesn't mean I don't esteem it highly.
EUGENE IONESCO
Rhinoceros
It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Persecution is as necessary to religion as pruning to an orchard.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought