quotations about religion
Imagine that the brain is a computer and that religion is a virus. Atheism is the wiping of that virus.
NICK HARDING
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News Talk, January 25, 2016
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H. L. MENCKEN
Minority Report
The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
Among its other faults, religion slows intellectual progress, promotes the acceptance of the implausible, and creates false general conceptions about reality -- all of which are harmful to progression in society.
MICHAEL HUEMER
"Is religion good or bad for society? Two experts debate", Catholic News Agency, February 6, 2016
There's nothing in our book, the Quran -- you call it "Ko-ran" -- that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, November 10, 1963
Religion is the whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating time and keeping tune.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The more false anyone is in his religion, the more fierce and furious in maintaining it; the more mistaken, the more imposing; the more any man's religion is his own, the more he is concerned for it, but cool and indifferent enough for that which is God's.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 16, 1915
Religion & Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
JAMES MADISON
letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822
Myths are lies; but I believe in the power of myths the way I believe in rocks ... rulers have had the various pantheons carrying water for them since the first con man met the first sucker, and priestcraft was born. That was long enough ago that they were probably both walking on their knuckles.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands
Every religious revolution has been the struggle of thought to gain another step in the ladder that reaches to heaven.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Christianity
If our existence is limited only to this world, religion is still of the greatest consequence, as more largely determining character, and more vastly influencing happiness, than any other single cause; and if it extends to a life beyond, it is of incalculably greater importance, as determining character and influencing happiness through illimitable periods of time. Indeed, without a belief in the being of God, without a recognition of his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and without faith in a divine system of rewards and punishments, wrought into the constitution of things, life is at once stripped of its majesty, and bereaved of its noblest promises.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The more we look into religion, the more we shall perceive it to be suitable to our nature and conducive to our happiness.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.
J. D. SALINGER
Zooey
Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
Ever since he repented of religion and shaved off his clerical beard and mustache, he has had the constant feeling that he has taken off his trousers, and that his nose protrudes altogether indecently and must at all cost be covered.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
"X", The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
True religion is a life unfolded within, not something forced on us from abroad.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts