Motivational Quotes

Religion

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

Best Quotes about Religion

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

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

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Abraham Lincoln

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

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

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

Waiter Rant

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Pound, Ezra

10.

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

11.

If religion is only human, and its form is man's form, it follows that everything in religion is true.

Chartier, Emile-Auguste

12.

Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful.

Randy K. Milholland

13.

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

Stella Terrill Mann

14.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Sade, Marquis De

15.

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

Marlowe, Christopher

16.

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

17.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

18.

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

Kraus, Karl

19.

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

Jane Austen

20.

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

Carl Sandburg

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Hope, Bob

24.

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

Updike, John

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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.

Russell, Bertrand

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

32.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

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

34.

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

Oscar Wilde

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Doris Egan

39.

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

Elizabeth Aston

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

45.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

46.

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.

47.

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

Ian McKellen

48.

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.

Niebuhr, Reinhold

49.

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

50.

Toleration is the best religion.

Hugo, Victor