RELIGION QUOTES III
quotations about religion
If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish -- if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
SIGMUND FREUD
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
In terms of the evolutionary process religion is such a waste of resources.
NICK HARDING
News Talk, January 25, 2016
Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to Phyllis (a child), January 24, 1936
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Fear, the Foundation of Religion", Why I Am Not a Christian
I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
The Jew of Malta
Religious beliefs prepare a kind of landscape of images, an illusory milieu favorable to every hallucination and every delirium.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
I'm more spiritual than I am religious. I don't go to church; I go to the beach.
PAULA DEEN
Good Housekeeping, November 2009
Religion ought not to be a speculative, metaphysical system of belief; but a compendium of moral and practical duties, embracing every function of man, supporting the right use of these functions, and prohibiting the abuse of them as the will of the Deity.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
God has no religion.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
I came to the conclusion long ago ... that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu ... But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, January 19, 1928
The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knowledge.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
That's me in the spot light, losing my religion.
R.E.M.
"Losing My Religion"
It's not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that's important, but what its followers do with what they learn.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
The primary aim of all religions and philosophical systems is to furnish an antidote to the certainty of death.
GEORGE BERKELEY
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.
MARK TWAIN
letter to Orion Clemens, March 1860