Motivational Quotes

Religion

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

Best Quotes about Religion

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Inge, Dean William R.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

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

Bierce, Ambrose

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

James Feibleman

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

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

10.

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

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.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

Lucretius

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

H. L. Mencken

20.

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

21.

A maker of idols is never an idolater.

Proverb, Chinese

22.

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

Ian McKellen

23.

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

24.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

25.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Sade, Marquis De

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

31.

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

Updike, John

32.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

33.

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

Abraham Lincoln

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

Oscar Wilde

38.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

39.

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

40.

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

Jane Austen

41.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx, Karl

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Chartier, Emile-Auguste

45.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

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

47.

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

Doris Egan

48.

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

Elizabeth Aston

49.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

Maistre, Joseph De

50.

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