Motivational Quotes

Religion

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.

- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Best Quotes about Religion

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

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

Waiter Rant

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.

Hugo, Victor

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.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Stella Terrill Mann

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

Bierce, Ambrose

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

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

Inge, Dean William R.

10.

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

Oscar Wilde

11.

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

Elizabeth Aston

12.

Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful.

Randy K. Milholland

13.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

14.

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

Kraus, Karl

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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.

Henry, Patrick

19.

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

Hope, Bob

20.

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

21.

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

Randy K. Milholland

22.

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

23.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

25.

A maker of idols is never an idolater.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

27.

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.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

28.

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

29.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

30.

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

H. L. Mencken

31.

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

32.

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.

George Burns

33.

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

Carl Sandburg

34.

Toleration is the best religion.

Hugo, Victor

35.

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

Updike, John

36.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

37.

When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.

Nerval, Gerard De

38.

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

Marlowe, Christopher

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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.

Shaw, George Bernard

44.

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.

James, William

45.

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.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

46.

Religion is love; in no case is it logic.

Webb, Beatrice Potter

47.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

Maistre, Joseph De

48.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.

Tillich, Paul

49.

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.

50.

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