RELIGION QUOTES III
quotations about religion
If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish -- if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
This dull river has a deep religion of its own; so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
American Note-Books, August 7, 1842
Religious beliefs prepare a kind of landscape of images, an illusory milieu favorable to every hallucination and every delirium.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.
MARK TWAIN
letter to Orion Clemens, March 1860
For to laugh is as religious as to weep; and smiles may bring us into the companionship of the Father no less than tears.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
speech at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, 1941
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knowledge.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse--when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome--others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
BARACK OBAMA
Audacity of Hope
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
I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to John Chambers, 1817
God has no religion.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Reinhardt Kleiner, September 14, 1919
True religion hath done only good in the world; but superstition, which is the counterfeit of religion, hath done the worst and the greatest mischief.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
He who leaves religion to his last day, reserves only the bran for God, while he gives the fine flour to the Devil.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
In terms of the evolutionary process religion is such a waste of resources.
NICK HARDING
News Talk, January 25, 2016
By these two Things Religion is recommended to us, above all other things whatsoever: 1. By the Satisfaction we thereby enjoy in Life; and 2. By the Expectation we have thereby at Death.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I'm more spiritual than I am religious. I don't go to church; I go to the beach.
PAULA DEEN
Good Housekeeping, November 2009