RELIGION QUOTES V
quotations about religion
People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Is There a God?", The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell
Religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough.
BONO
interview, Larry King Weekend, December 1, 2002
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
The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
For the existence of any religion there must be a belief that there is, somewhere in the universe, an intelligence of a higher order than man's, and that this intelligence possesses a power superior to what we call the ordinary powers of nature. And religion is simply the condition or adjustment of the relations between each individual human soul and that higher intelligence, call it by what name you will.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
Religion is a sovereign balm to the penitent; but burning coals to the scoffer.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does.
ANDY ROONEY
Sincerely, Andy Rooney
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
I'm for decency -- period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out.
FRANK SINATRA
Playboy Magazine, February 1962
A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Labyrinths
It is your organized religions that have made it clear through their most sacred scriptures that cruelty and killing is an acceptable response to human frailty and human differences. This goes against every human instinct, but organized religion has reorganized human thoughts. Some humans have even been turned against their own instinct for survival. And so people go around maiming and killing each other, because they've been told quite directly that this is what God does to them--and what God wants them to do to each other.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
The New Revelations: A Conversation with God
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
Sauce maketh palatable the dish of the epicure; even so doth religion sweeten the bitter cup of adversity to the Christian.
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
If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal -- God is the Omnipotent Father -- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.
GORE VIDAL
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science. What the mystic finds waiting for him, then, is a humanity which has been prepared to listen to his message by other mystics invisible and present in the religion which is actually taught. Indeed his mysticism itself is imbued with this religion, for such was its starting point. His theology will generally conform to that of the theologians. His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually. And this he can do easily, since theology has tapped that very current whose source is the mystical. Thus his mysticism is served by religion, against the day when religion becomes enriched by his mysticism. This explains the primary mission which he feels to be entrusted to him, that of an intensifier of religious faith.
HENRI BERGSON
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Look at the most religious areas of the world at present -- the Middle East and the United States. These are sick societies, and they're going to get sicker. People are never more dangerous than when they have nothing left to believe in except God.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come