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Religion quotes

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“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

“As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research.” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

“So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in a nation's life.” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

“Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think.” Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

“Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water!” Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also.” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, and there's this couple lying naked in bed reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more 'numinous' than the Resurrection. Do they know how to have a...” Carl Sagan, Contact

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.” David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

“I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart.” Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly

“Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

“My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God...” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a...” Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... or change.” Stephen King, The Stand

“A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born in it.” Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of my Experiments with Truth

“It is in itself a kind of religion; it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and of sentiment.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,—cannot be altogether men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury...” Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux

“The majority of people living on our planet profess to be believers. This should spur religions to dialogue among themselves for the sake of protecting nature, defending the poor, and building networks of respect and fraternity.” Pope Francis, Laudato si'

“How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it...” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans, all have different names, but they all contain water.” Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly

“Answering to this, all religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.” Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

“I am not religious, I reckon. But peace is my heart: I know it is.” William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!” Karl Marx, Das Kapital

“As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned—I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture or...” Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

“I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.” Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species

“What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.” Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.” Carl Sagan, Contact

“Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?” Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.” C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.” David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“MAYONNAISE, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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Related topics

ignorance belief morality Christianity science God evil reason truth faith fear government miracle slavery difference understanding love education freedom heart

Related authors

Thomas Jefferson (4)
Terry Pratchett (3)
C. S. Lewis (6)
Carl Sagan (5)
Albert Einstein (4)
Ambrose Bierce (3)
Muhammad Ali (3)
William James (3)
Christopher Hitchens (3)
A. W. Tozer (2)
Blaise Pascal (2)
Frederick Douglass (2)
Charlotte Brontë (2)
Mahatma Gandhi (2)
Herman Melville (2)
Charles Bukowski (2)
Isaac Asimov (2)
Karl Marx (2)
Virginia Woolf (2)
Frank Zappa (2)

Related sources

The Varieties of Religious Experience (3)
Mere Christianity (4)
The world as I see it (4)
Notes on the State of Virginia (4)
The Devil's Dictionary (3)
The Soul of a Butterfly (3)
Contact (3)
Small Gods (3)
Pensées (2)
The Story of my Experiments with Truth (2)
Jane Eyre (2)
Moby-Dick (2)
Critique of Pure Reason (2)
The Pursuit of God (2)
Democracy in America (2)
The Real Frank Zappa Book (2)
The Screwtape Letters (2)
Das Kapital (2)
Ham on Rye (2)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (2)