Motivational Quotes

Religion

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

- Marlowe, Christopher

Best Quotes about Religion

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.

Freud, Sigmund

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

Quinet, Edgar

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.

Jane Austen

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.

Gurdjieff, George

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Arnold, Matthew

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.

D. H. Lawrence

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

Doris Egan

A good test of a man's religion is its vitality.

10.

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

Charles Lamb

11.

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

12.

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

Bakunin, Mikhail

13.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

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.

Herzen, Alexander

15.

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.

Einstein, Albert

16.

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.

Thomas Jefferson

17.

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?

Martineau, Harriet

18.

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.

Hobbes, Thomas

19.

Give us a religion that will help us to live -- we can die without assistance.

Hubbard, Elbert

20.

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

Marlowe, Christopher

21.

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

Carl Sandburg

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

25.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

26.

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

27.

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.

Huxley, Aldous

28.

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Lucretius

29.

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

Jane Austen

30.

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.

Lewis, C. S.

31.

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 someoneÆs bugging you just act crazy. IÆve modified her approach somewhat. Public displays of religiosity work just as well as feigning psychosis.

Waiter Rant

32.

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

33.

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

Stella Terrill Mann

34.

Religion is love; in no case is it logic.

Webb, Beatrice Potter

35.

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.

Lafollette, Suzanne

36.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

37.

And lips say God be pitiful, who never said, God be praised.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

38.

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.

Marx, Karl

39.

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.

Young, Brigham

40.

Toleration is the best religion.

Hugo, Victor

41.

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.

Twain, Mark

42.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas -- uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes.

Rushdie, Salman

43.

It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity.

Radhakrishnan, Sir Sarvepalli

44.

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.

Frye, Northrop

45.

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.

Lawrence, D. H.

46.

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

Ian McKellen

47.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx, Karl

48.

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.

Hoagland, Edward

49.

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

Pascal, Blaise

50.

I do benefits for all religions -- I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.

Hope, Bob