quotations about religion
Religion is the most substantial thing in the world; it can take more hard knocks than anything else. Geology has jammed great boulders against it, and it is not even scratched; astronomy has assailed it, yet amid the bright spheres of heaven it lifts its glorious head. It has stood all the wear and tear of all sciences and all discussion; it is the most substantial thing you can think of; it is the most robust thing in existence. Do not think you can hurt it by taking it into your workshop. Let it out of your clothes pocket; it will suffer there. The only thing that religion dreads is lack of room, lack of freedom, lack of breath. Take it out of your pocket and bring it into everything. Do not fear that it will desecrate religion to bring it into contact with the world. It will consecrate the world; it will consecrate every deed and every act, and make them glorious.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Most of us make an eight-day clock of our religion: we wind it up on Sunday morning and pay no heed to it for the rest of the week.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
In religious worship, the presence of the mind may compensate for the absence of the body; but the presence of the body cannot compensate for the absence of the mind.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible
The only consistent purpose of human religion was as a cover for the most bestial excesses of mass homicide, torment, and atrocity.
MICK FARREN
Darklost
Some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ
In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.
SIGMUND FREUD
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions--and should be vigorously opposed.
STEVE ALLEN
Reflections
I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, How to Be Like Walt
Human nature is deformed and depraved without religion.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.
JAMES MADISON
"Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments"
Spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it.
MARK TWAIN
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Some men want to have religion like a dark lantern, and carry it in their pocket, where nobody but themselves can get any good from it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The challenge would be not to follow a religion unthinkingly, but to succeed in taking seriously a text that was written two thousand years ago -- in taking seriously every word and every story -- and nevertheless to live in the present in a humanitarian and enlightened way. Nobody says that this is easy, but human consciousness is capable of it. Religion is never just the Word of God. It is the ever-changing relationship of humans to this word. It is from just this movement of the human spirit that the great cultures have arisen.
NAVID KERMANI
"Of Course Religion is First and Foremost a Duty", First Things, January 20, 2016
A religion that is small enough for us to understand would not be large enough for our needs.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs