quotations about religion
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
Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God -- imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant -- and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave?
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible
The foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness", The Varieties of Religious Experience
Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
The only consistent purpose of human religion was as a cover for the most bestial excesses of mass homicide, torment, and atrocity.
MICK FARREN
Darklost
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
It has been said that men carry on a kind of coasting trade with religion. In the voyage of life, they profess to be in search of heaven, but take care not to venture so far in their approximations to it, as entirely to lose sight of the earth; and should their frail vessel be in danger of shipwreck, they will gladly throw their darling vices overboard, as other mariners their treasures, only to fish them up again when the storm is over.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ
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
A religion that is small enough for us to understand would not be large enough for our needs.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
The challenge would be not to follow a religion unthinkingly, but to succeed in taking seriously a text that was written two thousand years ago -- in taking seriously every word and every story -- and nevertheless to live in the present in a humanitarian and enlightened way. Nobody says that this is easy, but human consciousness is capable of it. Religion is never just the Word of God. It is the ever-changing relationship of humans to this word. It is from just this movement of the human spirit that the great cultures have arisen.
NAVID KERMANI
"Of Course Religion is First and Foremost a Duty", First Things, January 20, 2016
No religion is the new religion.
ANDREW BROWN
"No religion is the new religion", The Guardian, January 20, 2016
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
If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to unknown recipient, December 13, 1757
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Character", The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson