quotations about religion
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
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
It is needless to say that a religion which declares war against the fundamental instincts of human nature must always fail, equally on the one side in regulating the passions of the thoughtless many, and on the other in commanding the suffrages of the thoughtful few.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Natural History of Atheism
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
Never believe in any faith younger than you are.
DAHLIA LITHWICK
"Everything Vibrates", Slate, November 12, 2008
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
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
Religion? Yes, I know it well; I've heard its prayers and creeds,
And seen men put them all to shame with poor, half-hearted deeds.
They follow Christ, but far away; they wander and they doubt.
I'll serve him in a better way, and live his precepts out.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Another Chance"
The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
The more false anyone is in his religion, the more fierce and furious in maintaining it; the more mistaken, the more imposing; the more any man's religion is his own, the more he is concerned for it, but cool and indifferent enough for that which is God's.
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
It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, July 6, 1922
The habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are -- terrified at ourselves in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils.
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
If our existence is limited only to this world, religion is still of the greatest consequence, as more largely determining character, and more vastly influencing happiness, than any other single cause; and if it extends to a life beyond, it is of incalculably greater importance, as determining character and influencing happiness through illimitable periods of time. Indeed, without a belief in the being of God, without a recognition of his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and without faith in a divine system of rewards and punishments, wrought into the constitution of things, life is at once stripped of its majesty, and bereaved of its noblest promises.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
I worship God. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whoever he may be, I don't really care, who has put us here on earth to perform our duties as citizens and family men; but I don't need to go into a church and kiss a silver platter and reach into my pocket to fatten a pack of humbugs who eat better than we do! Because one can honor him just as well in a forest, in a field, or even gazing up at the ethereal vault, like the ancients. My own God is the God of Socrates, Franklin, Voltaire, and Béranger.... I cannot, therefore, accept the sort of jolly old God who strolls about his flower beds with cane in hand, lodges his friends in the bellies of whales, dies uttering a groan and comes back to life after three days: things absurd in themselves and completely opposed, what is more, to all physical laws; which simply goes to show, by the way, that the priests have always wallowed in a shameful ignorance in which they endeavor to engulf the peoples of the world along with them.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
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
Many men carry their religion as a church carries its bell--high up in a belfry, to ring out on sacred days, to strike for funerals, or to chime for weddings. All the rest of the time it hangs high above reach--voiceless, silent, dead.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Men have an itch rather to make Religion than to use it: but we are to use our Religion, not to make it.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Not believing in anything is also a religion.
CESARE PAVESE
The House on the Hill