Religion Quotes

Immorality is the word we use to describe people that are not sinning the same way we are.

~ Shannon L. Alder

He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.

~ Craig Ferguson

If opposites attract why is the church trying so hard to mirror the world?

~ Lakesha Ruise

Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins...

~ T. Rafael Cimino

But in every church there are people who, for reasons which seem sufficient to them, do not approve of their pastor and seek to harry him and bully him into some condition pleasing to themselves. The democracy which the Reformation brought into the Christian Church rages in their bosoms like a fire; they would deny that they regard their clergyman as their spiritual hired hand, whom they boss and oversee for his own good, but that is certainly the impression they give to observers.

~ Robertson Davies

Church, in the New Testament sense of the word, is not a meeting we attend, but a group of which we are a part, and a group we serve within.

~ Keri Wyatt Kent

With such luck as this, he rode the beast in the jaunty way that she deserved, back north, seemingly back from Mexico, pulling up finally at an outlying bar-ex-saloon (they had covered the old adobe face with knotty pine, substituted big stone matades for the cuspidors) and having brought her wrecklessly this far did not park her in the little parking lot but in front of the church next door. They had lifted that face too and neonized, but it did no good, they seemed to know they had no chance against an older god, their doors were closed. Thus one could join the pagan worshipers with a self-righteous shrug, through latticed doors.

~ Douglas Woolf

Pray more often and read and obey The Holy Scriptures in The Holy Bible.

~ Errol Anthony Smythe.

The spiritual muscles I hadn't used for decades began to acquire some tone, and since they were Catholic muscles too, it was natural to look for a church to work out in.It was hard. Appalling though the predations exacted on the monastic liturgy were, they were nothing compared to the desecration exacted on the secular. Latin was gone entirely, replaced by dull, oppressive, anchorman English, slavishly translated from its sonorous source to be as plain and direct as possible. It didn't seem to have occurred to the well-meaning vandals who'd thrown out baby, bath, and bathwater that all ritual is a reaching out to the unknowable and can be accomplished only by the noncognitive: evocation, allusion, metaphor, incantation—the tools of the poet.

~ Tony Hendra

Karate is not A religion, cult or dogma. It is incumbent on every generation of martial artists, to find the weaknesses of the previous generations, not to revere it . . .

~ Soke Behzad Ahmadi

The highest form of worship is to answer God's prayer.

~ Agona Apell

You must worship the Self in Krishna, not Krishna as Krishna.

~ Swami Vivekananda

In many (most?) churches there are programs and activities... but so little worship. There are songs and anthems and musicals... but so little worship. There are announcements and readings and prayers... but so little worship.

~ Charles R. Swindoll

Rituals are the kindergarten of religion. They are absolutely necessary for the world as it is now, only we shall have to give people newer and fresh rituals. A party of thinkers must undertake to do this. Old rituals must be rejected and new ones substituted.

~ Swami Vivekananda

The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship, even natural to worship unnatural things

~ G.k. Chesterton

We don't worship Satan, we worship ourselves using the metaphorical representation of the qualities of Satan. Satan is the name used by Judeo-Christians for that force of individuality and pride within us. But the force itself has been called by many names.We embrace Christian myths of Satan and Lucifer, along with Satanic renderings in Greek, Roman, Islamic, Sumerian, Syrian, Phrygian, Egyptian, Chinese or Hindu mythologies, to name but a few. We are not limited to one deity, but encompass all the expressions of the accuser or the one who advocates free thought and rational alternatives by whatever name he is called in a particular time and land. It so happens that we are living in a culture that is predominantly Judeo-Christian, so we emphasize Satan. If we were living in Roman times, the central figure, perhaps the title of our religion, would be different. But the name would be expressing and communicating the same thing. It's all context.

~ Anton Szandor Lavey

The leaf of the camomile, parboiled in water, conduces to calm. And yet I do not worship it.

~ David Mamet

The road to the heart is not a long, linear path, but this turning. There is no race or competition, just me and God going deeper, carving a canyon to the soul.

~ Anna White

Religion can only be a means to a set of values cherished by its living adherents. If those values relate only to a past or a presumed afterlife, it is a sign that religion has become a goal serving the ends of a priest or a demagogue and rest of the living are merely tools to serve that end. If it is not to become a fossil, it has to be a living faith serving the cherished values of the living.

~ R. N. Prasher

What is Religion according to you?“Religion is your idea of leading life, the value you not only hold close to your heart but ones that you practice, the passions in your life, the faith in your ideals, the vision you have for your life and the society around you.

~ Vishwas Mudagal

If faith makes people buy an entire package of myths and values without asking too many questions, scientists are only slightly better.

~ Frans De Waal

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death, the modern man's worst fear is just death

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

But in Hebrew scripture David is not just the “sweet singer of Israel,” the chiseled poet who plays a harp and composes the Psalms. After he makes his name by killing Goliath, David recruits a gang of guerrillas, extorts wealth from his fellow citizens at swordpoint, and fights as a mercenary for the Philistines. These achievements make Saul jealous: the women in his court are singing, “Saul has killed by the thousands, but David by the tens of thousands.” So Saul plots to have him assassinated.19 David narrowly escapes before staging a successful coup. When David becomes king, he keeps up his hard-earned reputation for killing by the tens of thousands. After his general Joab “wasted the country of the children of Ammon,” David “brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes.” 20 Finally he manages to do something that God considers immoral: he orders a census. To punish David for this lapse, God kills seventy thousand of his citizens.

~ Steven Pinker

Sadistic brutality and mystical feeling go always hand in hand when the normal capacity for orgastic experience is lacking. This was as true of the inquisitors of the medieval church, of the cruel and mystical Philip II of Spain, as it is of any modern mass murderer.

~ Wilhelm Reich

We have seen lots of people who are living in our world together with us but their religion taught them which they are better than us, so i would like to give those people a small advice that if your religion or your faith requires to hate people of other religions and faiths, and your religious leaders from one way or other way spreading hate and violence among people then is better that u stop believing in that religion cause i am pretty sure that religion does not apporoved by God but by mankind. God said that love every human beings beyond any condition and he also mentioned even your enemies so if a religion taught their followers not to love other religion followers or they are better then others then mean it is against God word. i would like to say that we should not condemn other for choosing a life path which they want even if it is something which we hate it or our religion does not approve it. We don't have to condemn but to understand thoes who are not believing what we believe. i also believe there is no religion which is more important and better then humanity so let's never judge people cause of their believe , nationality, colour or country. let's more important stay human, love humanity and love human beings unconditionally.

~ Arash Tabish

Life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death! Has been for thousands of years! Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians; all taking turns killing each other because God told 'em it was a good idea.

~ George Carlin

Pleasure, ecstasy, they cannot seem to bear: their escape from it is in violence, in drinking and fighting and apparently inescapable----And so why should not their religion drive them to crucifixion of themselves and one another? he thinks.

~ William Faulkner

I show how much of the wars of religion involved Catholics killing Catholics, Lutherans killing Lutherans, and Catholic-Protestant collaboration. (Page 10 The Myth of Religious Violence)

~ William Cavanaugh

We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.

~ Pope Francis

We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber's targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the 20th century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent. In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies do his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike?

~ Karen Armstrong

Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them they could make themselves “right” and others “wrong” and thus define their identity through their enemies, the “others”, the “nonbelievers” or “wrong believers” who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in the killing.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Isn't it amazing that, historically, the Prince of Peace has most often been introduced to new cultures through extreme violence? European and American colonialists bring this disparity to light in a way that makes me wish that forced conversion didn't work so extraordinarily well.

~ David G. Mcafee

The desire to be loved, to feel loved, is behind every diet, pill, surgery, and lie. It is behind each act of violence and every affair as well as each organized religion and every method of self-help.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

By incorporating him (Buddha) into the domain of Hindu traditions, and by depicting him as a Hindu sage who was a glorious incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Brahmins attempted to secure their position of authority in the society.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Unlike most other world religions, Buddhism has never been too rigid in its structure.

~ Abhijit Naskar

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

~ Buddha Gautama

Allah protect us,' Bold said politely. Then, in Arabic, 'In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.' In his years in Temur's army he had learned to be as much a Muslim as anyone. The Buddha did not mind what you said to be polite.

~ Kim Stanley Robinson

A person who is asleep is either lost in deep unconsciousness or absorbed in a dream. Metaphorically, this was how the Buddha must have seen both his previous self as well as everyone else he had known: they either were blind to the questions of existence or sought consolation from them in metaphysical or religious fantasies.

~ Stephen Batchelor

Whilst on the subject of the spread of Buddhism in the West, I want to say that I have noticed some tendency towards sectarianism amongst new practitioners. This is absolutely wrong. Religion should never become a source of conflict, a further factor of division within the human community.

~ Dalai Lama Xiv

...you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over be present out there

~ John Green