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Religion quotes

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“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice” - 1600

“RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1911

“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” - 1689

“On the other hand, I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research.” Albert Einstein, “The world as I see it” - 1949

“As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal, “Pensées” - 1670

“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” - 1845

“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” - 1910

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“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” - 2004

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.” David Hume, “A Treatise of Human Nature” - 1738

“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” - 1851

“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” - 1988

“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” - 1985

“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” - 1785

“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” - 1992

“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” - 16 October 1847

“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” - 1952

“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” - 1949

“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” - 1835

“I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.” William James, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” - 1902

“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” - 1978

“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” - 1992

“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” - 1929

“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” - 1843

“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” - 1785

“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'” - 24 May 2015

“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” - 1874

“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” - 1952

“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector.” Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Pure Reason” - 1791

“Religions are often the state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience” Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World” - 1995

“I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the more foolish.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“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” - 1867

“There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird” - 1960

“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” - 1932

“The religion we have is our all-important instrument towards that end. With it we have brought the Four Kingdoms under our control, even at the moment when they would have crushed us. It is the most potent device known with which to control men...” Isaac Asimov, “Foundation” - 1951

“It is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion, the ordinances of which are derived from God, must be incomparably superior to that of every other.” René Descartes, “Discourse on the Method” - 1637

“SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1911

“They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.” Ray Bradbury, “The Martian Chronicles” - 1950

“Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing-room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!” Virginia Woolf, “Mrs Dalloway” - 1925

“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” - 1952

“Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave.” Carl Sagan, “Contact” - 1985

“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” - 1949

“Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?” Chuck Palahniuk, “Fight Club” - 1996

“People who are religious should be glad, since not everyone is blessed with the ability to believe in a higher order.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“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” - 1989

“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no...” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse.” Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” - 1876

Related topics

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

Related authors

C. S. Lewis (6)
Carl Sagan (5)
Albert Einstein (4)
Thomas Jefferson (4)
Muhammad Ali (3)
Ambrose Bierce (3)
Terry Pratchett (3)
William James (3)
Charlotte Brontë (2)
Herman Melville (2)
Virginia Woolf (2)
David Hume (2)
Mahatma Gandhi (2)
Martin Luther (2)
Alexis de Tocqueville (2)
Frederick Douglass (2)
Karl Marx (2)
Immanuel Kant (2)
Charles Bukowski (2)
Isaac Asimov (2)

Related sources

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