quotations about religion
Unfortunately, two concurrent forces constantly threaten our peace of mind. First, poor mortals imagine that good or malevolent gods watch over them, follow them about, spy on them and interfere at every turn. They look upon lightning as an omen or a punishment and tremble at the sound of thunder. They believe that supernatural forces are everywhere present; they imagine that they see them rise up before them from all sides, like the bogies that frighten children during the night. Then death itself appears to them, not as an agent of deliverance, but as the gateway to hell, the grim reaper, and every conceivable form of torture. The result of all this is that they devote their lives to fearing the gods and death; this dual superstition is a constant source of anxiety and crime; it poisons their lives and corrupts their happiness and their morality.
HENRI BERGSON
The Philosophy of Poetry
There's nothing in our book, the Quran -- you call it "Ko-ran" -- that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, November 10, 1963
Religion sows within us the seeds of an undying joy that fails not when outward means of happiness fail, and sorrows darken, and cares appall. It sheds abroad a holy serenity in the heart, and imparts a calm lustre to the brow.... It reveals new sources of happiness. It makes the spire of grass and the star beautiful ministers of delight.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, The Vedanta Kesari, Volume 65
The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.
J. D. SALINGER
Zooey
Where there is only a show of religion, there is only an imagination of happiness.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right things--it's feelings. It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics--a man may be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe; but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution, and love something else better than his own ease.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Ever since he repented of religion and shaved off his clerical beard and mustache, he has had the constant feeling that he has taken off his trousers, and that his nose protrudes altogether indecently and must at all cost be covered.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
"X", The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
Imagine that the brain is a computer and that religion is a virus. Atheism is the wiping of that virus.
NICK HARDING
News Talk, January 25, 2016
Indifference in religion is more fatal than skepticism. There is no pulse in indifference; skepticism may have warm blood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion is not the tame and sleepy thing which some suppose. This misapprehension is derived partly from erroneous views of doctrine, but yet more from the examples of actual Christianity among us, which fall so far short of the biblical standard.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
Faith
True religion is a life unfolded within, not something forced on us from abroad.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
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", Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Never believe in any faith younger than you are.
DAHLIA LITHWICK
"Everything Vibrates", Slate, November 12, 2008
The more we look into religion, the more we shall perceive it to be suitable to our nature and conducive to our happiness.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible
Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 16, 1915
Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
Myths are lies; but I believe in the power of myths the way I believe in rocks ... rulers have had the various pantheons carrying water for them since the first con man met the first sucker, and priestcraft was born. That was long enough ago that they were probably both walking on their knuckles.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands