quotations about religion
Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
attributed, Wittgenstein Reads Freud
An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of the idea of God.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
Tradition is the mediation of divine revelation across the generations; it is more than an individual can know or come up with for himself. But today, everything must be in accordance with our sound human reason, and we do not consider that this reason, like all human reason before it, is temporally conditioned. Religion should be just as we'd like it, it should pronounce what we already think, it should be compatible with our time. But it is of the very essence of religion that it is not compatible with our time, or with any time. Jesus was quite obviously not compatible with his time.
NAVID KERMANI
"Of Course Religion is First and Foremost a Duty", First Things, January 20, 2016
Some will tell you all you need is religion. They are wrong. You can go to church, mosque or synagogue ten times a day, pray hard and read the Scriptures as often as possible, give generous alms, and visit holy cites weekly. None of that can stop demons from rising in you, if you harbor jealousy or evil intentions toward your neighbour or fellow human.
PETER ABRAHAMS
Killers of the True Holy War
There is nothing more unnatural to religion than contentions about it.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
If everyone will try to understand the core of his own religion and adhere to it, and will not allow false teachers to dictate to him, there will be no room left for quarrelling.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible
Religion is the most substantial thing in the world; it can take more hard knocks than anything else. Geology has jammed great boulders against it, and it is not even scratched; astronomy has assailed it, yet amid the bright spheres of heaven it lifts its glorious head. It has stood all the wear and tear of all sciences and all discussion; it is the most substantial thing you can think of; it is the most robust thing in existence. Do not think you can hurt it by taking it into your workshop. Let it out of your clothes pocket; it will suffer there. The only thing that religion dreads is lack of room, lack of freedom, lack of breath. Take it out of your pocket and bring it into everything. Do not fear that it will desecrate religion to bring it into contact with the world. It will consecrate the world; it will consecrate every deed and every act, and make them glorious.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
To me, it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities till it has thrown off the incubus of historic (and prehistoric) religion.
WILLIAM ARCHER
William Archer as Rationalist: A Collection of His Heterodox Writings
Some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, How to Be Like Walt
Religion makes us live as those who represent God in the world.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Human nature is deformed and depraved without religion.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
If we bring up religion we'll have differences; we'll have arguments; and we'll never be able to get together.
MALCOLM X
speech at the Congress for Racial Equality in Detroit, Michigan, April 12, 1964
The more that science discovers, the less room religion has to substantiate itself. As the pool of scientific knowledge grows, so diminishes the ability of sane and reasonable people to hold the bible, or parts of, as literal. Over the decades and centuries, the bible and other religious texts have been taken ... more and more metaphorically. You see, the only way for the faithful to reconcile their beliefs with new scientific discoveries, is to take the bible less and less literally. Eventually, the bible and other religious texts will be reduced to nothing more than fanciful mythologies, just like the 12 gods of ancient Greece and Rome, or the Norse gods of the Scandinavians.
KUNG FURIOS
"Religion is fiction", News 24, February 16, 2016
If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.
SIGMUND FREUD
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
The very religion given to exalt human nature, has been used to make it abject. The very religion which was given to create a generous hope, has been made in instrument of servile and torturing fear. The very religion which came from God's goodness to enlarge the soul with a kindred goodness, has been employed to narrow it to a sect, to rear the Inquisition, and to kindle fires for the martyr. The very religion given to make the understanding and conscience free, has, by a criminal perversion, served to break them into a subjection to priests, ministers, and human creeds. Ambition and craft have seized on the solemn doctrines of an omnipotent God and of future punishment, and turned them into engines against the child, the trembling female, the ignorant adult, until the skeptic has been emboldened to charge on religion the chief miseries and degradation of human nature.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj