Religion Quotes
479 quotes
"Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart."
"Hate the sin, love the sinner."
"Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand."
"Knock, And He'll open the doorVanish, And He'll make you shine like the sunFall, And He'll raise you to the heavensBecome nothing, And He'll turn you into everything."
"A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent."
"My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."
"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."
"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong."
"Religion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes."
"No woman wants to be in submission to a man who isn't in submission to God!"
"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee."
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"I believe in good and evil,"said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness."Tessa looked at will. "What about you? What do you believe?"Pulvis et umbra sumus,"said Will, not looking at her as he spoke. "I believe we are dust and shadows. What else is there?"
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."(Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, May 16, 1767)"
"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it."
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!"
"To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?"
"This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness."
"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals."
"Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun."
"I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts."
"Quit questioning God and start trusting Him!"
"If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."
"I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas."
"It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished."
"I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line."
"I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate."
"Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?"
"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."
"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism."
"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?"
"Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peaceYou may say that I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one"
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
"Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian."
"You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle."
"We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid."
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
"What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition."
"From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable."
"It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free."
"The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all."
"I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion."
"I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world."
"Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."
"I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves."
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