Motivational Quotes

Religion

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

Best Quotes about Religion

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Martineau, Harriet

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

Kraus, Karl

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

Toleration is the best religion.

Hugo, Victor

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

Abraham Lincoln

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

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

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

Elizabeth Aston

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

Inge, Dean William R.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx, Karl

16.

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

17.

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

Matthew Arnold

18.

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

19.

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

Ian McKellen

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

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.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

25.

A maker of idols is never an idolater.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

Arnold, Matthew

27.

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

28.

Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful.

Randy K. Milholland

29.

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

Stella Terrill Mann

30.

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

31.

Religion is love; in no case is it logic.

Webb, Beatrice Potter

32.

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

Pound, Ezra

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

Maistre, Joseph De

38.

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

H. L. Mencken

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Sade, Marquis De

44.

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

Updike, John

45.

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

Doris Egan

46.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

47.

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

48.

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

Chartier, Emile-Auguste

49.

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

50.

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

Jane Austen