Quotes About Religion

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. – William James

Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. – G. I. Gurdjieff

Wars don’t bring lasting peace, only lasting death. – Janet Morris

No, if you talk to God you’re religious. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic. – Doris Egan

To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance. – Eric Hoffer

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible. – Seán O’Casey

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough. – Aldous Huxley

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality. – Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. – Barack Obama

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. – Friedrich Nietzsche

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force. – Mark Twain

We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer. – Victor Hugo

The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion. – Matthew Arnold

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. – G. K. Chesterton

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architectural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections. – Reinhold Niebuhr

I don’t want to be any closer to the gods than death will bring me. – Janet Morris

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. – Ambrose Bierce

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but innocence. – Christopher Marlowe

Toleration is the best religion. – Victor Hugo

So well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him I fought beside you. – Janet Morris

And lips say God be pitiful, who never said, God be praised. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Gods have bloody hands. – Janet Morris

For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect. – Thomas Hobbes

It’s incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal. – Edward Hoagland

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. – George Bernard Shaw

Religions are the cradles of despotism. – Marquis de Sade

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. – Albert Einstein

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? – Douglas Adams

But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy? – Harriet Martineau

All gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any. – Janet Morris

Honorable battle sustains a Sacred Band. – Janet Morris

Bandara was not an easy place to return to: it could hide from the common worlds whose periphery it inhabited. But Bandara never had, in all its years, completely disappeared. – Janet Morris

I’m reverent from a distance. – Janet Morris

Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds. – Susan Sontag

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition. – Alan Turing

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

Don’t try to tear down other people’s religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy it’s glories. – Brigham Young

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification. – D. H. Lawrence

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. – Albert Einstein

A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished. – Thomas Babington Macaulay

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions. – Benjamin Disraeli

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference which is, at least, half infidelity. – Edmund Burke

Die never for a god, Nikodemos who should know better — not your soldiers’ god, nor any other. – Janet Morris

Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm, and yet will make Gods by dozens. – Michel de Montaigne

Religion is the opium of the masses. – Karl Marx

Of all possible sexual perversions, religion is the only one to have ever been scientifically systematized. – Louis Aragon

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. – Thomas Paine

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists. – Joseph de Maistre

When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest. – Karl Kraus

It is upon each soul to recognize its limit. – Janet Morris

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former — of the corruption of the will. – Alexander Herzen

Give us a religion that will help us to live — we can die without assistance. – Elbert Hubbard

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy. – William Ralph Inge

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad. – Thomas Paine

I do benefits for all religions — I’d hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality. – Bob Hope

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. – Carl Sagan

A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; — nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain. – George Bernard Shaw

A maker of idols is never an idolater. – Unknown

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art. – Ezra Pound

Every man heals himself. – Janet Morris

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. – Karl Marx

I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity. – Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is certain that if you would have the whole secret of a people, you must enter into the intimacy of their religion. – Edgar Quinet

Religion I have disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give to them, and that is the Christian religion. If they had that and I had not given them one cent, they would be rich. If they have not that, and I had given them the world, they would be poor. – Patrick Henry

Religion is like holding on to a rock in the middle of a raging river; faith is learning how to swim. – Unknown

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. – John Updike

Not every religion has to have St. Augustine’s attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn’t prevent it being a religious ceremony. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Culture’s essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object. – Northrop Frye

A good test of a man’s religion is its vitality. – Unknown

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions. – Oscar Wilde

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy. – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. – Bertrand Russell

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion. – George Bernard Shaw

It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient. – Mark Twain

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit. – Harriet Martineau

Opium of the people. – Karl Marx

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. – Blaise Pascal

Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word! – William Cowper

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them? – Buddha

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. – Mahatma Gandhi

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

Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams – they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do – they all contain truths. – Muhammad Ali

I don’t want my children to be what I want them to be. I want my children to become everything God created them to be

More and more people care about religious tolerance as fewer and fewer care about religion. – Alexander Chase

People who rely most on God rely least on themselves. – Lemuel K. Washburn

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won’t let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion. – Malcolm X

All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way. – Epictetus

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion. – Abraham Lincoln

Religion is a fashionable substitute for Belief. – Oscar Wilde

It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow. – Calvin Coolidge

True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness. – Albert Einstein

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. – Albert Einstein

I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents become better people as a result of practicing it. – Joe Mullally

A religion without the element of mystery would not be a religion at all. – Edwin Lewis

It is doubtless true that religion has been the world’s psychiatrist throughout the centuries. – Karl Menninger

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses. – Arthur Schopenhauer

All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays. – Cathy Ladman

No religion is a true religion that does not make men tingle to their finger tips with a sense of infinite hazard. – William Ernest Hocking

All religions must be tolerated… for… every man must get to heaven his own way. – Frederick the Great

Say and do what you like, religion is always religion. The rich, perhaps, can get along without it, but it is necessary for people like us…. When one is unhappy… it is the only thing that will soothe you. Only that, and love. – Octave Mirbeau

Religion — an intellectual colouring book for adults. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

Most men’s anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady that neither of them care for. – George Savile

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstances. – Theodore Dreiser

All men have need of the gods. – Homer

Looking at these points of unity, we might say there is but one religion under many forms, whose essential creed is the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man,—disguised by corruptions, symbolized by mythologies, ennobled by virtues, degraded by vices, but still the same. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. – Seneca the Younger

My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I’m willing to give Him the chance. – Mignon McLaughlin

Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine. – Austin O’Malley

If there were no God, there would be no Atheists. – G.K. Chesterton

Religion is speculation pretending to be revelation. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

[R]eligion cannot be given or bought, but must grow as trees grow, needing frost and snow, rain and wind to strengthen it before it is deep-rooted in the soul. – Louisa May Alcott

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. – G.K. Chesterton

It is our happiness to live in a time when all religions are at last outgrowing their mythologies, and emancipated men are stretching out their hands to share together “the luxury of a religion that does not degrade.” … Unveil these darkened windows, but remove also these darkening walls; the temple itself is but a lingering shadow of that gloom. Instead of its coarse and stifling incense, give us God’s pure air… – Thomas Wentworth Higginson

A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to degrade its God. – Havelock Ellis

Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. – William James

Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soul-less conditions. It is the opium of the people. – Karl Marx

Not all religion is to be found in the church, any more than all knowledge is found in the classroom. – Author Unknown

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. – Author Unknown

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. – Richard Burton

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. – David Hume
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson

I didn’t know I had a quarrel with him. – Henry Thoreau

In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners. – Jonathon Miller

I love theists. It’s theism I can’t stand. – Rich Lane

Hell is – other people. – Nietzsche

Religion is being locked in and you can’t get out; atheism, the other side of the door. – Terri Guillemets

I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless. – Peter Walker

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. – George Santayana

Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. – Ambrose Bierce

A man without religion is like a horse without a bridle. – Latin Proverb

All religion is bunk; it may be helpful bunk, comforting bunk, or, in some cases, necessary bunk. It is still bunk, nonetheless. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? – John Adams

Is it not strange that men are so glad to fight for religion and so reluctant to live according to its precepts? – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. – C.C. Colton

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. – Jorge Luis Borges

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. – Francis Bacon

Impiety, n.: Your irreverence toward my deity. – Ambrose Bierce

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. – James Feibleman

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. – Ambrose Bierce

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Inuit earnestly, “did you tell me?” – Annie Dillard

I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. – D. Dale Gulledge

The faith that stands on authority is not faith. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. – Edgar Allen Poe

Belief in God is but a whistling in the dark; harmless enough, perhaps — until it is wedded to the notion that all should carry the same tune. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning. – Imamu Amiri Baraka

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

It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. – Abraham Lincoln

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains…. But it can put mountains where there are none. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Religion is just superstition wearing a better suit of clothes. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew that a bottle of Port would do that. If you want religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better, but I can’t give any advice on it. – C.S. Lewis

Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on. – Author unknown

To all things clergic
I am allergic. – Alexander Woollcott, attributed

What has been the effect of religious coercion? To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. – Thomas Jefferson

‘Tis not to go to church to-day,
To look devout, and seem to pray,
And ere to-morrow’s sun go down,
Be dealing scandal through the town.
Not every sanctimonious face,
Denotes the certain reign of grace;
A phiz, that seems to scowl at sin,
Oft veils hypocrisy within.
‘Tis not to mark out duty’s walk,
Or of our own good deeds to talk;
And then to practice secret crime,
And to misspend and waste our time.
‘Tis not for sects or creeds to fight,
And call our zeal the rule of right;
When all we wish is, at the best,
To see our church excel the rest…
It grieves to hear an ill report,
And scorns with human woes to sport;
Of others’ deeds it speaks no ill,
But tells of good or else is still… – Reginald Heber (1783–1826), “Religion! What Is It?”

It is a sad sight — a religion abandoned to its hypocrites. – Robert Brault

The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people. – Ezra Pound

Take no alarm, dear reader, at the sound of the word Religion, for I have not the least idea of conducting you into some dark, subterranean cathedral where the air is oppressive and unnatural, but would lead you right out under heaven’s sunny dome, where the joyous gospel of nature and inspiration are breathed into the soul….
This cosmical religion, broad as the world and reaching out to the infinite, as far transcends the man-made creeds that run counter to nature’s laws, as the sky transcends all cathedrals that lift up their puny spires beneath it. I have aimed to lead my dear struggling human brothers and sisters into the vestibule of the Temple of Life where are joys forevermore, and where the radiant soul of things begins to appear. – Edwin D. Babbitt

In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays… bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it. – John Updike

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. – Isaac Asimov

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion. – Robert Green Ingersoll

God — but a word invoked to explain the world. – Prat de Lamartine

Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them? – Jules Feiffer

How can the Church be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible? – John W. Draper

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. – Robert Heinlein

The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress. – Emmet F. Fields

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God’s sheep and Devil’s goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned. – Robert Ingersoll

Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else’s stinks. – Picket Fences

Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one’s eyes shut and wailing “Does not!” – Author Unknown

We are not accountable for the sins of Adam. – Robert G. Ingersoll

The third major characteristic of God — “infinitude” — is the catchall, the universal modifier of Christian theology. God is not merely a being; he is infinite being. God is not merely good; he is infinite goodness. God is not merely wise; he is infinite wisdom. And so on down the list. God is exaggeration run amuck. – George H. Smith

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. – H.L. Mencken

Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver. – Robert G. Ingersoll

Christianity is not a religion; it’s an industry. – Author unknown

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead. – Robert G. Ingersoll

Such religion is Churchianity; it is not Christianity. Christianity means the religion where Christ is all; Churchianity, the religion where the Church is all. – John Cumming, “Salvation,” sermon preached before the Queen, 1850 September 22nd

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one. – Sigmund Freud

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him. – George Orwell

God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. – Friedrich Nietzsche

None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The records do not show that Adam and Eve were married. – Ed Howe

In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. – Stephen J. Gould

Religion is faith in anything other than ourselves. – Terri Guillemets

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. – George Bernard Shaw

Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish. – Author Unknown

Where there are gaps in knowledge, religion tends to seep in. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths. – Muhammad Ali

To say that different races worship different Gods, is like saying that they are warmed by different suns. The names differ, but the sun is the same… – Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Religion: a cultural glue of mythic tradition… – Dr. Idel Dreimer

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science. – Heinz Pagels

I believe in God, but I’m not too clear on the other details. – Bill Veeck

Religion seems to have a way of making people abandon logic. – Amanda Baxter, 1998

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. – Bertrand Russell

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough. – Aldous Huxley

Some cling to religion as the infallible source of morality; in fact, religions — which are created by societies — encapsulate the moral values already established and inherent in those societies. The appeal to religious values is simply an appeal to tradition dressed up as divinity. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to this very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he had sown? What right would this god have to complain of a crucifixion suffered in accordance with his own command? – Robert G. Ingersoll

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction. – Pascal

The imaginary flowers of religion adorn man’s chains. Man must throw off the flowers and also the chains. – Karl Marx

Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion. – Lemuel K. Washburn

Most people’s religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe. – Luther Burbank

It is the position of some theists that their right to freedom of religion is abridged when they are not allowed to violate the rationalists’ right to freedom from religion. – James T. Green

The last Christian died on the cross. – Friedrich Nietzsche

If the sole reason why you must not kill your neighbour is because God has forbidden it and will severely punish you for it in this or the next life — then, when you learn that there is no God and that you need not fear His punishment, you will certainly kill your neighbour without hesitation, and you can only be prevented from doing so by mundane force. Thus either these dangerous masses must be held down most severely and kept most carefully away from any chance of intellectual awakening, or else the relationship between civilization and religion must undergo a fundamental revision. – Sigmund Freud

Everyday people are straying away from the church and going back to God. – Lennie Bruce

Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance. – John F. Schumaker

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. – Jonathan Swift

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. – G.K. Chesterton

Islam teaches tolerance, not hatred; universal brotherhood, not enmity; peace, and not violence. – Pervez Musharraf

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks. – Malcom X

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life. – Buddha

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. – Soren Kierkegaard

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. – Khalil Gibran

There should be no discrimination against languages people speak, skin color, or religion. – Malala Yousafzai

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other ‘isms’ grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity. – Roger Ebert

As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness. – Ram Dass

Even though you can’t expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make the attempt. That’s morality, that’s religion, that’s art, that’s life. – Phil Ochs

Religion doesn’t make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology. – Reza Azlan

Since many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church and others are non-believers, from the bottom of my heart I give this silent blessing to each and every one of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you but knowing that each one of you is a child of God. – Pope Francis

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction. – Talib Kweli

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion. – Dalai Lama

These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness. – Anthony de Mello

Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God. – Radhanath Swami

One of the great strengths of the United States is… we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values. – Barack Obama

Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion! – Thomas Huxley

Religion is among the most beautiful and most natural of all things — that religion which ‘sees God in clouds and hears Him in the wind,’ which endows every object of sense with a living soul, which finds in the system of nature whatever is holy, mysterious and venerable, and inspires the bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration. – William Godwin

It doesn’t matter how you pray. Just pray. All religions are beautiful and they all have one common belief. There’s something bigger and greater than us that can give us and take from us life. It is better than the here and now. – Mattie Stepanek

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. – Seneca

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life. – Aristotle

Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone’s back. – Desmond Tutu

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion. – Abraham Lincoln

Goodwill toward all beings is the true religion; cherish in your hearts boundless goodwill to all that lives. – Buddha

I believe that whether a person follows any religion or not is unimportant, he or she must have a good heart, a warm heart. – Dalai Lama

Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. – Albert Enistein

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 Enistein

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. – Voltaire

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. – Voltaire

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason. – Voltaire

Cultures, nations, religions, and people are not rocks. They are in constant transformation. – Hans Rosling

Politics has slain its thousands, but religion has slain its tens of thousands. – Sean O’Casey

The proper task of religion is to regulate the heart of man, to humanize his conduct, and to infuse the spirit of temperance, order and obedience. – David Hume

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is. – Mahatma Gandhi

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religions impose their dogmas, bend conscience under their laws, deny freedom of discussion and of judgment to their clients, and, in the name of God, proscribe all thought which they do not control, all liberty except the liberty to bow down and believe. – Louis Jacolliot

…it is my firm opinion that the whole batch of religions with their aims and claims are a barrier to world peace. Religion does not unite people. It divides them. Religion is not only a barrier to world peace but a thwarter and a stumbling block to world progress. – G. Vincent Runyon

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will – and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. – Gene Roddenberry

Religion and its practices have consistently been one of women’s fiercest enemies… The fact that many women do not realize this shows how thorough the brainwashing and intimidation have been. – Arnold Toynbee

To religious despotism, imposing speculative delusions, and class-legislation, may be attributed the decay of nations. – Louis Jacolliot

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages. – Ruth H. Green

…since the power of the printing press has risen, the influence of the priesthood has diminished. – Dr. Thomas Inman

Static religions are the death of thought. – Alfred North Whitehead

The world is my country, to do good my religion. – Thomas Paine

The idea that Gods and religions represent — merely —human theories and suppositions about reality — satisfies the detached intellect, but does not feed, apparently, a deep emotional hunger. Is it too much to suggest that an early infantile illusion — a perception of parental perfection, power, and benevolence — is mirrored in the yearning for “God?” The need for that illusion persists: “God” provides a comforting, caressing circularity — a womb of benevolent certainty to replace that which has been lost. – Dr. Idel Dreimer

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position one hundred percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism. – Barry Goldwater

To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God. – Victor Hugo

No religion can rise to power quickly without vast promises, fierce threats, and the doctrine of imminent disaster. – Martin Larson

Honesty, like charity, must begin at home. Unless we can tell the truth in our churches we will never tell the truth in our shops. Unless our teachers, the ministers of God, are honest, our insurance companies and corporations will have to be watched. Permit sham in your religious life, and the disease will spread to every member of the social body. If you may keep religion in the dark, and cry “hush,” “hush,” when people ask that it be brought out into the light, why may not politics or business cultivate a similar partiality for darkness? If the king cries, “rebel,” when a citizen asks for justice, it is because he has heard the priest cry, “infidel,” when a member of his church asked for evidence. Religious hypocrisy is the mother of all hypocrisies. Cure a man of that, and the human world will recover its health. – M.M. Mangasarian

…In religion, they become “holier than thou” types filled with terrible hatreds which in turn cause guilt complexes that drive them deeper into their religious frame of reference. The outlet for their scrambled emotions is to try to foist their beliefs – and their fears – onto the rest of us. – John Keel

That which has remained in the heart of man after his unhappy fall is for him a religion. He attaches himself to those fragments, which are at least those of truth. He lovingly preserves these remnants of his ancient opulence. He seats himself weepingly on these ruins; he will not have them taken from him. Perhaps he knows that such ruins are the cornerstone of the colossal edifice which shall one day arch high above his consoled race its lofty and tutelary dome. Whosoever insults these ruins insults man’s wretchedness, despoils his indigence. Humanity cannot afford to hold cheap the feeble beliefs that remain to it; it pronounces an anathema on the hand that would fain outrage those fragments, and heap up fresh ruins amongst those that already exist. – Alexandre Vinet

[I]n all sincerity she began her search, and with pathetic patience waited for an answer. She read many books, some wise, some vague, some full of superstition, all unsatisfactory to one who wanted a living God. She went to many churches, studied many creeds, and watched their fruits as well as she could; but still remained unsatisfied…. There was too much machinery, too many walls, laws, and penalties between the Father and his children. Too much fear, too little love… too little faith in the instincts of the soul which turns to God as flowers to the sun. Too much idle strife about names and creeds; too little knowledge of the natural religion which has no name but godliness, whose creed is boundless and benignant as the sunshine, whose faith is as the tender trust of little children in their mother’s love. – Louisa May Alcott

The Judeo-Christian-Moslem-Hindu complex of religions is so troublesome because these religions are moralistic, absolutist, sex-negative, patriarchal, exclusionary, supremacist, hierarchical, legalistic, militant and imperial in nature. Historically, these religions have been used as tools for the construction, conquest, justification and maintenance of centralized political empires (or conversely, these empires have been used as tools to spread the religions.) Religion and Empire are part of the same historical/political complex and have co-evolved for millennia. They’re components of a more general pathological process in history and human organization. – Mark Thompson

Religion can never reform mankind, because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture-gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life’s morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life’s joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art’s nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship. – Robert G. Ingersoll

The Creed of Science

To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits–to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then to be resigned–this is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart. – Robert Ingersoll

Quotes From Wikiquote

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.
- John Adams, letter (original manuscript at the Library of Congress) to Thomas Jefferson, 19 April 1817. The italicized section within the statement has often been quoted out of context. Earlier in the letter Adams explained that Bryant was his “Parish Priest” and Cleverly his “Latin School Master”.
- “Religion maybe linked to social inequality if the religion being practiced is not the dominant religion in a particular culture or society”

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
It’s an oral history. It was passed down, word-of-mouth, father to son, from Adam to Seth, from Seth to Enos, from Enos to Cainan, for 40 generations, a growing, changing, story, it was handed down, word-of-mouth, father to son. Until Moses finally gets it down on lambskin. But lambskins wear out, and need to be recopied. Copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of an oral history passed down through 40 generations.
From Hebrew it’s translated into Arabic, from Arabic to Latin, from Latin to Greek, from Greek to Russian, from Russian to German, from German to an old form of English that you could not read. Through 400 years of evolution of the English language to the book we have today, which is: a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an oral history passed down through 40 generations.
You can’t put a grocery list through that many translations, copies, and re-telling, and not expect to have some big changes in the dinner menu when the kids make it back from Kroger’s.
And yet people are killing each other over this written word. Here’s a tip: If you’re killing someone in the name of God — you’re missing the message.