Motivational Quotes

Religion

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

Best Quotes about 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.

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

Feuerbach, Ludwig

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

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

Elizabeth Aston

Toleration is the best religion.

Hugo, Victor

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

Chartier, Emile-Auguste

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

Arnold, Matthew

10.

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

Inge, Dean William R.

11.

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

12.

Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm, and yet will make Gods by dozens.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

13.

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

14.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

15.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Sade, Marquis De

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Marlowe, Christopher

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Ian McKellen

24.

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

25.

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

Jane Austen

26.

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

Updike, John

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx, Karl

36.

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

Matthew Arnold

37.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

38.

A maker of idols is never an idolater.

Proverb, Chinese

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Stella Terrill Mann

46.

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Lucretius

47.

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

Hope, Bob

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich