Religion Quotes

Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child.

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.

Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.

I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction.

The only time anyone's admitted they were a Christian before was when they were busy telling me why they're better than me.

Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful.

Clergymen have much the same in their breeches as other men.

Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.

My mom grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Bronx and gave me an invaluable piece of advice for dealing with people in New York - if someone's bugging you just act crazy. I've modified her approach somewhat. Public displays of religiosity work just as well as feigning psychosis.

I would no more quarrel with a man because of his religion than I would because of his art.

Religions are born and may die, but superstition in immortal.

The home of a clergyman is constantly judged by its parishioners. If it is too large and richly decorated, it is the subject of jealousy. If it is too small and humble, it is the subject of scorn. If it is too clean and orderly, it is considered a museum where charity is untouched and kept in a box. If it is slovenly, it is the subject of disgust.

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

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

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

A cult is a religion with no political power.

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

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.

When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities.

The Baptists' basic theology is that if you hold someone under water long enough, he'll come around to your way of thinking. It's a ritual known as 'Bobbing for Baptists.'

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and not to be constrained by force.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Whatever God's dream about man may be, it seems certain it cannot come true unless man cooperates.

To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.

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

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.

It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

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

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window.

Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.

My mind is my own church.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion.

Religion is all bunk.

Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment.

Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty...this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That�s my religion.

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

Regarding the debate about faith and works: It�s like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most important.

If these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of 'religion.'

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.

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

Is one religion as good as another? Is one horse in the Derby as good as another?

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as the gap between those who worship and those who don't.

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.

Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.

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

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.