Religion
254 quotes
Biography
"Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out,"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion the world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite society, I mean Hell."
"Because religion is such an opinion-based topic, I had better lay my own cards on the table. I was raised a Catholic and was a strong believer until age 21. After searching other religions I became a “None,”and then an agnostic--believing one cannot say at this point whether the universe had a creator, and if so what that creator’s qualities might be (beyond the all-time highest score on the SAT-Math test). I have enough familiarity with religion that I can pass as a scholar among people who know nothing about the subject. Similarly, I know enough of the Bible to seem well informed in a room of people who have never opened the book. I don’t think any of this has affected the answers people have given to my surveys, which is what this chapter is about. But as always, you will be the judge of that."
"A man's religion should be more in his life than on his lips."
"Arrogance and fanatical belief had become a racial trait. The galaxy belonged to them, having been fashioned for them by their God, so everything belonged to them, and they could do with it what they wanted, and what they wanted usually involved subjugation, destruction, and death. Religion, a vicious and hearty meme at best, usually collapsed as civilizations became spacefaring, for most such belief systems, initiated when the world was still flat and thunder was the bellowing of gods, usually could not survive the realities of the universe and the steady abrasion of science."
"Religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others."
"Religions have been basis of the tyranny of kings and sultans."
"There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth."
"The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions."
"The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
"One's religion is whatever he is most interested in."
"Men use religion just as they use buoys and life-preservers; they do not intend to navigate the vessel with them, but they keep just enough of them on hand to float into a safe harbor when a storm comes up and the vessel is shipwrecked; and it is only then that they intend to use them. I tell you, you will find air-holes in all such life-preservers as that."
"By religion I do not mean outward things, but inward states, I mean perfected manhood. I mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of the divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and confidence, and trust."
"Religio peperit divitias et filia devoravit matrem."
"The primary epiphenomenona of any religion's foundation are the production and flourishment of hypocrisy, megalomania and psychopathy, and the first casualties of a religion's establishment are the intentions of its founder."
"A l’erreur opposons la vérité, à la foi l’évidence, la science aux religions. Les propagandistes religieux ne font connaître aux enfants qu’une seule doctrine. Faisons-leur connaître toutes les doctrines, non seulement dans leur état actuel, mais dans leur genèse et dans leur développement. Instruisons-les des ressemblances et des analogies qu’elles ont entre elles, et aussi des ressemblances et des analogies qu’ont entre eux leurs fondateurs et leurs propagateurs. Puis laissons-les libres de choisir entre les hypothèses, et si aucune des anciennes ne les satisfait, libres d’en imaginer de nouvelles."
"The British finally seem to have taken to heart words attributed to an anonymous British elder statesman in the 19th century: We must preserve the Church of England. It's our only defense against real religion."
"In short, in whatever light we view religion, it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of Majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature; the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious emotion."
"The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior. It is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal superstition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit."
"It doesn’t matter how often I hear: religion, religion, religion, I know deep in my heart that it is not about religion. It is about the battle of matter and spirit—the battle of the oppressed that are dispossessed— and want to possess—because they feel possessed. And they are possessed of spirit. It is the call of the oppressed to be possessed by something higher than material dispossession. After all the schisms of isms—after Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Communism, Feminism —after separation of church and state—it is an anachronism to call it a religious crusade when it is a global conflict between the ones who have too much and the ones who have too little, too little to lose."
"You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of an eye for an eye, a life for a life, which is known throughout the universe for its… stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision; but nobody's paid much attention to them, not even the Buddhists or the Christians."
"Religion as a whole is but a form of loyalty to the interests of English property."
"Curva trahit mites, pars pungit acuta rebelles."
"It were endless to enumerate all the passages both in the sacred and profane writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the divinity. Hence the common maxim, primos in orbe deos fecit timor [fear brought the first gods into the world]. This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally nothing else but fear to support them."
"But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance, it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion."
"People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion. — "What religion?" — the Earl said, "Men of sense never tell it.""