quotations about religion
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
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
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
Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible
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
Religion makes us live as those who represent God in the world.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I am terrified of what seems to me to be a bottleneck that civilization is passing through. On the one hand we have 21st-century disruptive technology proliferating, and on the other we have first-century superstition. A civilization is going to either pass through this bottleneck more or less intact or it won't. And perhaps that fear sounds grandiose, but civilizations end. On any number of occasions, some generation has witnessed the ruination of everything they and their ancestors had built. What especially terrifies me about religious thinking is the expectation on the part of many that civilization is bound to end based on prophecy and its ending is going to be glorious.
SAM HARRIS
debate with Rick Warren, April, 2007
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, like all things, begins with self,
And naught is known, until one knows himself.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Veritas Vincit"
In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
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
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Character", The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
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
No religion is the new religion.
ANDREW BROWN
"No religion is the new religion", The Guardian, January 20, 2016
If the very nature of religion is change, and we don't progress individually or as a species, then we have been left behind. Change is inevitable. I'm not sure structured religion will allow this, hence why its necessary to leave, for everyone. Once this happens, then the only religion one needs is: Life.
GEORGE ELERICK
"How I Found God After Leaving Religion", Patheos, February 13, 2016
The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.
JAMES MADISON
"Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments"
Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Culture and Value
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