religion

1.

It is a mistake to suppose that God is only, or even chiefly, concerned with religion.

- Archbishop William Temple

2.

INADMISSIBLE, adj. Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria. But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges'decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

- Ambrose Bierce

3.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

4.

The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.

- Bertrand Russell

5.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.

- Lawrence, D. H.

6.

We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other.

- Jonathan Swift

7.

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

8.

Man without religion is the creature of circumstances.

- Augustus Hare

9.

In England there are sixty different religions and only one sauce.

- Francesco Caracciolo

10.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

- Diderot, Denis

11.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

- Brookner, Anita

12.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

- Proust, Marcel

13.

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.

- Eric Hoffer

14.

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

15.

"Knowledge, without common sense," says Lee, is "folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death." But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with clarity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

- Austin Farrar

16.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

- Martineau, Harriet

17.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

- Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)

18.

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.

- Oscar Wilde

19.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

- Hardy, Thomas

20.

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.

- Paglia, Camille