Religion Quotes

The first Sunday I sang in the church choir two hundred people changed their religion.

Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'.

Wole Soyinka

Your religion cannot be divorced from your relationships.

Jim George

Why anyone’s argument for god(s) is fallacious, especially as a causal agent:Imagine Michael and Jessica are at Jimmy’s house sitting at the kitchen table. Jessica steps outside to take a phone call. When she returns her drink is spilled. Jessica asks, “How did my drink get knocked over?” Michael replies, “It was a SnickerDoodle.”J: “What’s a SnickerDoodle?”M: “It looks a little like an elephant but it is small, pink, and invisible.”J: “Is it invisible or pink? It can’t be both.”M: “Well, it is. You can’t understand what the SnickerDoodle looks like.”J: “Zip it. SnickerDoodle’s are not real. How did my drink get knocked over?”M: “Well, it was Jimmy’s cat, but it was because he was chasing the SnickerDoodle, so the SnickerDoodle made him do it.”J: “Stop with the SnickerDoodle, you weirdo.”M: “Just kidding, it was Jimmy’s cat, I don’t know why.”We have no reason to believe that SnickerDoodle’s are real. Without SnickerDoodles being established as possible causes to drinks being knocked down, then there is no point to discussing them as the cause of Jessica’s drink being knocked over. In similar fashion, we have to establish that cats are a possible reason that drinks get knocked down. Okay, we have established that cats are real and capable of doing so. It is now a viable option, but in order for Michael’s story have any plausibility, we not only have to establish that a cat did it, we have to establish that it was Jimmy’s cat, or that Jimmy even has a cat.Believers cannot get to step one, establishing that any god is even a viable option on the list of possibilities. Then even if gods were proven to be real, you still have to prove that it was your particular god, or that your particular god exists. To argue that your god is real, is like Michael arguing that Jimmy’s SnickerDoodle knocked over Jessica’s drink. Can grown-adults take that argument seriously? Really?

Michael A. Wood Jr.

Whereas Jesus and his disciples were distrusted by the state largely because they respected the poor and shared everything, the fundamentalists of the present hour would appear not to know that the poor exist.

James Baldwin

If you ask a conservative for a statement of his political convictions, he may well say that he has none, and that the greatest heresy of modernity is precisely to see politics as a matter of convictions as though one could recuperate, at the level of political purpose, the consoling certainty which once was granted by religious faith. In another sense, however, conservatism does rest in a system of belief, and is opposed as much to the theory as to the practice of socialist and liberal politics.

Roger Scruton

Thou shalt not tweet to be retweeted.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Thou shalt not unfollow someone, merely because they stopped following you.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Thou shalt not follow someone, merely because they are following you.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There are so many things to exploit man, but religion and patriotism are at the top of the list.

Tarif Naaz

Dante, I think, committed a crude blunder when, with a terror-inspiring ingenuity, he placed above the gateway of his hell the inscription, 'I too was created by eternal love'--at any rate, there would be more justification for placing above the gateway to the Christian Paradise...the inscription 'I too was created by eternal hate'...

Friedrich Nietzsche

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

Eugene H. Peterson

I revered our theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to subject them to the impotency of my reason; and I thought that in order competently to undertake their examination, there was need of some special help from heaven, and of being more than man.

René Descartes

According to Aquinas, effort may not be the best measure of our virtue.

Jen Pollock Michel

I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be better when you die,” the people of my grandma’s generation said as they worked themselves to death. “God wants you to forgive and love those who do you wrong,” some people said to shake off the shame of being unable to respond to the abuse they endured. The holier-than-thou faction found comfort in believing, “The rest of y’all are lost because you don’t have a personal relationship with God—our God.” But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not just the big world of Tokyo and Sydney and Johannesburg, but the bigger world of ideas and concepts and feelings of history and humanity.

Wynton Marsalis

You have a perfect right to consign us all to hell, rector, but you must allow us the choice of how we get

Angus Wilson

the cosmopolitan gaze of planetary love and hospitality _is_ what constitutes being _religious_.

Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan discourse...provides one with a _public gaze_ with which one can relate oneself to others in a different way.

Namsoon Kang

How can one maintain a theological confidence in what one claims to be _true_ while acknowledging the existence of multiple religions that also claim to be _true_?

Namsoon Kang

Gods can only keep their promises in books

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Even if god was proved beyond doubt that he did not exist. We would still believe in him. We don't need hard facts, we need true emotions.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

We are gods but we are afraid of the ensuing responsibility; that's why we prefer to remain slaves. Only if we dared to rise up to the challenge and assume our divinity, we could perform most of the miracles we pray for.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Believing, as they now did, that the heavenly powers took part in human affairs, they became so much absorbed in the cultivation of religion and so deeply imbued with the sense of their religious duties, that the sanctity of an oath had more power to control their lives than the fear of punishment for lawbreaking.

Livy

Obvious choices for the east window: the two bloody bargains on which civilization claimed to be based. The bargain, Rivers though, looking at Abraham and Isaac. The one on which all patriarchal societies were founded. If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be able to exact the same obedience from your sons. Only we’re breaking the bargain, Rivers thought. All over northern France, at this very moment, in trenches and dugouts and flooded shell-holes, the inheritors were dying, not one by one, while old men, and women of all ages, gathered together and sang hymns.

Pat Barker

Face it, George – unlike cholera, death is the only disease everyone is guaranteed to get.’Heath nodded slowly. ‘But usually only once, Hamish. Usually only once.

Nigel Holloway

McAllister looked up into her face, his eyes blazing with anger. At last, his composure cracked.‘That’s right,’ he shouted back. ‘My word against – whose? Yours? You were dead, remember? No, of course you don’t remember. You were dead!

Nigel Holloway

There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.

Robert A.F. Thurman

...you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over be present out there,

John Green

Karate is not A religion, cult or dogma. It is incumbent on every generation of martial artists, to find the weaknesses of the previous generations, not to revere it . . .

Soke Behzad Ahmadi

A church service starts and ends with a prayer. A magazine starts and ends with an advert.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Religion is the sense of comprehension of the totality of existence.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

In our towns and cities they will continue to be born, in our communities they will go on to be nurtured & radicalised & from within our neighbourhoods they will terrorise & murder our citizens including women & children in their attempt to destroy the very fabric & order of our civilised society. They are influenced by our ignorance, our lack of knowledge is their power, martyrdom in the name of their God and prophet is their aspiration & so it is critical that we waste no time & learn more about them & this ideology they follow before we can even begin to eradicate this chilling & growing endemic Islamic faith based terrorism’.

Cal Sarwar

What are the chances that of all 1.59629 quadrillion square feet of physical land on planet Earth, three major world religions are literally fighting over one single rock?

Jared Brock

Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest."Their skepticism is comprehensible. In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics—notably the late Edward Said—who pointed out that calling Muslims 'ancient' was usually just another way to denigrate them. Look instead, these scholars urged, to the conditions in which these ideologies arose—the bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil."Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons.

Graeme Wood

I, too, am a drum major for justice. I will continue to speak out-LOUD and PROUD- as long as gay youth are killing themselves because someone instilled in them they are not enough. Well, baby, you're more than enough. You were molded with the same care and precision as your heterosexual counterparts. You are unique. God has a special plan for you that only you can fulfill. Live your life!

J'son M. Lee

Pathology can indeed evoke experiences of Absolute Godliness, but not all God experiences are caused by pathology. They can also occur due to disturbance in the geomagnetic field of our planet, consumption of psychedelics, excruciatingly extreme level of stress during a near- death situation, or ultimately through a natural and healthy procedure of meditation or/and prayer.

Abhijit Naskar

Every beautiful place is your temple, you can always visit them; every useful book is your holy book, you can always read them; every place you find love is your heaven, you can always go there! Don’t get stuck in the temples, in the so-called holy books and heavens of the religions because life is much richer, much superior and much intelligent than all the religions because life is alive, it is dynamic and it continuously develops itself!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Sales is my Religion and Customer is my God and I Worship Him, The only thing is that my God is not very happy n generous always.

honeya

With all respect to your religion or world-view — thank God, thank the universe, thank evolutionary processes — the keyword is "thank" — just have some gratitude and be thankful.

Bryant McGill

Some people spend their entire lives devoted to a religion that claims to be the ‘right’ religion... they often deny scientific evidence that contradicts their archaic holy books, they sometimes oppress those who disagree with them, and they always do what they do in the name of an unknowable deity... but sometimes, they wake up. Occasionally, they realize that all religions are man-made and that none of them are ‘right.’ And when they do, they can live happy and fulfilling lives without dogma and without anticipating or fearing an afterlife.

David G. McAfee

. . . In all parts of our globe, fanatics have cut each other's throats, publicly burnt each other, committed without a scruple and even as a duty, the greatest crimes, and shed torrents of blood . . . Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under divers names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty. We find, in all the religions, 'a God of armies,' a 'jealous God,' an 'avenging God,' a 'destroying God,' a 'God,' who is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshippers consider it a duty to serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women, are sacrificed to him. Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Madmen may everywhere be seen, who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to please him they must inflict on themselves, the most exquisite torments. The gloomy ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have every where disquieted their minds, and prejudiced follies destructive to happiness.

Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

Leaving one religion for the sake of another one is like breaking with a rapist for the sake of dating a misogynist.

M.F. Moonzajer

One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'.

Criss Jami

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void.

Terence McKenna

And just like that, as if I hadn't said anything at all, the ladies sprang into a conversation about the sinful nature the Jews possessed when killing their Lord Jesus. I didn't know if I was hearing this right because I had become so intoxicated, but I couldn't believe that anyone would talk about religion while on vacation. How could Miss Nebraska think this was a proper environment to discuss something so controversial? One woman went on to say that if she had her way not only would President Bush serve a second four-year term, but she hoped they would overturn Roe v. Wade. This woman was obviously a menace to society and needed to be stopped.

Chelsea Handler

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine. Human when originally divulged, it becomes divine when finally established. At first, the breath of a rage—at last it is the edict of a god. Endowed with such vital energy, astronomical truth has cut its way through the thick darkness of superstitious times, and, cheered by its conquests, Geology will find the same open path when it has triumphed over the less formidable obstacles of a civilized age.

David Brewster

One's interest or need does not annul other's right.

Al-Hafiz B.A. Masri

A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.

Russell Baker

I am usually able to tolerate all kinds of victims of indoctrination except those who have been infected with xenophobia, racism, or homophobia.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

He alone is a man who keeps his word:Not that he has one thing in the heart, and another on the tongue.

Guru Gobind Singh

[Tolstoy] does not necessarily get rid of [his angry] temperament by undergoing religious conversion, and indeed it is obvious that the illusion of having been reborn may allow one's native vices to flourish more freely than ever, though perhaps in subtler forms.

George Orwell

We are all born agnostics. Atheism and theism is sold to us.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Thou shalt not use the 140 characters limit as an excuse for bad grammar and/or incorrect spelling.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Those who mouth your sacred words with an accent you deem wrong annoy you more than those speaking something you cannot understand.

Thomm Quackenbush

imagine the desertmothers, with hair tangledtighter than their theologyand breasts that flowed milkand mystic wisdom. theyknew how to draw the singingsigils in the sand, how to digrough and bitten fingersinto desiccated dirt for waterto wet the lips of their young.women of hips and heft, wholearned how to burnbeneath the wild and searingsun, who made loud loveagainst the star-flecked threatof night, who knew that strengthis not always a matter of muscle.imagine your ancestresses,the prophetesses of the aridlands, before these starchedtraditions and pews too hardto pray from, who bled trueritual and birthed their own fiercesouls at creation's crowning --

Beth Morey

If you do not understand the Golden Rule, which is the most important law in the universe, then you are in trouble. All other rules in your holy books combined — are not as valuable as the ONE Golden Rule. Take two minutes to learn the most crucial law in life. Killing another human comes with the highest penalty, regardless of how you justify it. All life is sacred.

Suzy Kassem

The 2 extremes, neither one worse than the other: the result of bad religion is self-loathing and violence; the result of bad spirituality is self-worship and narcissism.

Criss Jami

May we find more grace to do good deeds.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Isn't the human body a miracle

Shane Flynn

Intellectualism is a poor master over passion

Twe Stephens

1 2 3 … 5 Next

Religion Quotes

Related Topics