RELIGION QUOTES IV
quotations about religion
The history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
A people without religion does not exist, or, if it does exist, it exists only as an abnormal and deficient specimen of the genus to which it belongs, which is of no more account in the just estimate of the type than a fox without a tail, or a lawyer without a tongue.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
What Does History Teach?
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but--live for it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed.
DAN BROWN
Angels & Demons
Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice -- that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Urn Burial
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis ... mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
The fact that I despise religion doesn't mean I don't esteem it highly.
EUGENE IONESCO
Rhinoceros
Religion, as it has been generally taught, is anything but an elevating principle. It has been used to scare the child, and appal the adult. Men have been virtually taught to glorify God by flattery, rather than by becoming excellent and glorious themselves, and thus doing honor to their Maker. Our dependence on God has been so taught, as to extinguish the consciousness of our free nature and moral power. Religion, in one or another form, has always been an engine for crushing the human soul. But such is not the religion of Jesus Christ. If it were, it would deserve no respect.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling?
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
Where Religion does take place and is effectual, it makes this world, in measure and degree, representative of Heaven.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice: everything is lost by failure to obey God's call.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Religion is a sovereign balm to the penitent; but burning coals to the scoffer.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Each religion has got their own way of making you feel like a victim. The Christians say "you are a sinner", and you better just zip up your trousers and give the money to the pope and we'll give you a room up in the hotel in the sky.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Timothy Leary's Last Trip
When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we're going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don't come suddenly.
SUE MONK KIDD
When the Heart Waits
In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
Without religion no man can soar.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit