RELIGION QUOTES IV
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
I began to see all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice -- that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does.
ANDY ROONEY
Sincerely, Andy Rooney
Men are not so weak, save only in Religion, to think anyone in earnest if he do no more than talk.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Persecution is as necessary to religion as pruning to an orchard.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Religion is a sovereign balm to the penitent; but burning coals to the scoffer.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed.
DAN BROWN
Angels & Demons
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
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but--live for it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Religion being the chief band of human society, it is a happy thing, when itself is well contained within the true band of unity. The quarrels, and divisions about religion, were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion of the heathen, consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief. For you may imagine, what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors, and fathers of their church, were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, that he is a jealous God; and therefore, his worship and religion, will endure no mixture, nor partner. We shall therefore speak a few words, concerning the unity of the church; what are the fruits thereof; what the bounds; and what the means.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Unity in Religion", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
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
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
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Labyrinths
A people without religion does not exist, or, if it does exist, it exists only as an abnormal and deficient specimen of the genus to which it belongs, which is of no more account in the just estimate of the type than a fox without a tail, or a lawyer without a tongue.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
What Does History Teach?
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
The difference between Christianity and Islam is that some people think a guy walked on water and other people think a horse can fly.
SCOTT ADAMS
Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
Religion is the life of God in the soul of man. Belief in the reality of religion involves belief that God is, and that He stands in some personal relation to man. But it is not an opinion respecting God, nor an opinion respecting His influence in the world of men. It is a personal consciousness of God. It is a human experience, but an experience of relationship with One who transcends humanity. The creed is not religion; the creed is a statement of what certain men think about religion. Worship is not religion; worship is a method of expressing religion. The church is not religion; the church is an organization of men and women, formed for the purpose of promoting religion. Religion precedes creeds, worship, church; that is, the life precedes men's thoughts about the life, men's expression of the life, men's organizations formed to promote the life. Religion may be personal or social; that is, it may be the consciousness of God in the individual soul, or it may be the concurrent consciousness of God in a great number of individuals, producing a social or communal life. In either case it is a life, not an opinion about life. It is not a definition of God, it is fellowship with Him; not a definition of sin, but sorrow because of sin; not a definition of forgiveness, but relief from remorse; not a definition of redemption, but a new and divine life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science. What the mystic finds waiting for him, then, is a humanity which has been prepared to listen to his message by other mystics invisible and present in the religion which is actually taught. Indeed his mysticism itself is imbued with this religion, for such was its starting point. His theology will generally conform to that of the theologians. His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually. And this he can do easily, since theology has tapped that very current whose source is the mystical. Thus his mysticism is served by religion, against the day when religion becomes enriched by his mysticism. This explains the primary mission which he feels to be entrusted to him, that of an intensifier of religious faith.
HENRI BERGSON
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
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