Religion Quotes

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Oscar Wilde

Nothing shocks me more in the men of religion and their flocks than their pretensions to be the only religious people.

Jean Guehenno

Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1972)

Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, New York Times Magazine, Mar. 12, 1978

I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.

Neil Postman

Difference of opinion is helpful in religion.

Thomas Jefferson

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

Thomas Jefferson

Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel.

Author Unknown

Religion is a defense against the experience of God.

Carl Jung

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.

Felix Adle

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Llama

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

George Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898)

Conventionality is not morality. Self - Righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Charlotte Bronte

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple the philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Lama

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

George Santayana

The artist needs no religion beyond his work.

Elbert Hubbard

Keep thy religion to thyself.

George Carlin

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men... the master of superstition is the people and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.

Francis Bacon

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

Sigmund Freud

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by... religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.

Harvey Cox

We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.

Cicero

Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty but it is religion and morality alone that can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.

John Adams

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.

Wendell Phillips

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non - Existence of Zeus or Thor - But they have few followers now.

Arthur C. Clarke

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt, 2002

The tendancy of liberals is to create bodies of men and women - Of all classes - Detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion - Mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.

George Eliot

If I had to live my life over again, I would have a different father, a different wife and a different religion.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (1907) act 2

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

I conceive the essential task of religion to be to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind.

Robert Millikan

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.

Albert Einstein

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

Gertrude Stein

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799