quotations about religion
Religion, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them, they could make themselves "right" and others "wrong" and thus define their identity through their enemies, the "others," the "nonbelievers" or "wrong believers" who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of [another].
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
He had turned to the gentle churchly faith endeared to him by the native trust of his fathers, for thence stretched mystic venues which seemed to promise escape from life. Only on closer view did he mark the starved fancy and beauty, the stale and prosy triteness, and the owlish gravity and grotesque claims of solid truth which reigned boresomely and overwhelmingly among most of its professors; or feel to the full the awkwardness with which it sought to keep alive as literal fact the outgrown fears and guesses of a primal race confronting the unknown.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Silver Key"
Religion is the whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating time and keeping tune.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Declaration of Rights"
Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved. 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. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone.
MUHAMMAD ALI
The Soul of a Butterfly
The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
Every religious revolution has been the struggle of thought to gain another step in the ladder that reaches to heaven.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Christianity
The Church must be intelligible to the simple as well as to the shrewd.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
A City Set on a Hill
If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Uttarpara Address, May 30, 1909
No religion is better than an unnatural one.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
To ordinary human beings, finally--the vast majority who exist for service and the general advantage, and who may exist only for that--religion gives in inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of heart, an ennobling of obedience, one further happiness and sorrow with their peers and something transfiguring and beautifying, something of a justification for the whole everyday character, the whole lowliness, the whole half-brutish poverty of their souls. Religion and religious significance spread the splendor of the sun over such ever-toiling human beings and make their own sight tolerable to them.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
Religion must be a punishment, because nobody gets religion who does not have a bad conscience.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
attributed, Prophets of Dissent
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Is There a God?", The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H. L. MENCKEN
Minority Report
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
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
Religion, like the law of gravity, binds each element of our nature to its own orbit. It gives the peace of a harmonious character, where the moral and intellectual powers hold their lawful spheres, and the appetites fill their restricted place, and the law of purity and holiness reigns supreme.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought