quotations about religion
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
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
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
Religion makes us live as those who represent God in the world.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
Some people, who are deeply involved in an organized, traditional religion, find it very difficult to accept that their way isn't the only way. And that their sacred text isn't the only text and it must be taken literally. This is hard for a lot of people, but it's obviously the direction that the world is going in, and you see it in something like the Eckhart Tolle experience -- people want a more universal spirituality.
ELIZABETH LESSER
"Conversation with Elizabeth Lesser", Feminist
No religion is the new religion.
ANDREW BROWN
"No religion is the new religion", The Guardian, January 20, 2016
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
EUGENE O'NEILL
The Great God Brown
Some men want to have religion like a dark lantern, and carry it in their pocket, where nobody but themselves can get any good from it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion is a process of turning your skull into a tabernacle, not of going up to Jerusalem once a year.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
The fundamental religion of most of mankind is the faith that God has revealed Himself to us and not to the barbarians. Our tribe is the one God chose and so if we vanquish the other tribes and rain fire and destruction on them, we're only carrying out God's Will.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"God Changes With the Weather", Salon, December 29, 2009
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
In religious worship, the presence of the mind may compensate for the absence of the body; but the presence of the body cannot compensate for the absence of the mind.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
Religion of your upbringing is like a cloak -- you must know how it is made in order to take it off.
BABA HARI DASS
The Yellow Book
Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
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