Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Religion

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

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.

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

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

Doris Egan

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.

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

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

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

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

10.

Thomas Jefferson

11.

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

12.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Sade, Marquis De

13.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

14.

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

Ian McKellen

15.

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

Carl Sandburg

16.

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

Stella Terrill Mann

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.

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

19.

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

20.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx, Karl

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

Maistre, Joseph De

25.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

26.

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

Oscar Wilde

27.

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

28.

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

H. L. Mencken

29.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

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.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

James Feibleman

34.

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

35.

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

Kraus, Karl

36.

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

Marlowe, Christopher

37.

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

Pound, Ezra

38.

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

39.

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

Arnold, Matthew

40.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Jane Austen

42.

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

Pascal, Blaise

43.

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

Abraham Lincoln

44.

Toleration is the best religion.

Hugo, Victor

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Waiter Rant