Motivational Quotes

Religion

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Religion

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

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

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

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

10.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx, Karl

11.

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

12.

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

Marlowe, Christopher

13.

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

Inge, Dean William R.

14.

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

Elizabeth Aston

15.

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.

16.

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

Abraham Lincoln

17.

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

Waiter Rant

18.

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

Carl Sandburg

19.

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

Pound, Ezra

20.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Sade, Marquis De

21.

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

22.

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

Oscar Wilde

23.

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

24.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

25.

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

Ian McKellen

26.

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

27.

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

Stella Terrill Mann

28.

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

29.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Pascal, Blaise

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful.

Randy K. Milholland

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

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.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Updike, John

47.

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

48.

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

Matthew Arnold

49.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

Maistre, Joseph De

50.

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

Jane Austen