Religious quotes
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"But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?"
"If there were two princes in Christendom who had good will and courage, it would be very easy to reconcile the religious difficulties; there is only one Jesus Christ and one faith, and all the rest is a dispute over trifles."
"Every profound dissatisfaction is of a religious nature: our failures derive from our incapacity to conceive of paradise and to aspire to it, as our discomforts from the fragility of our relations with the absolute."
"For [Karl] Marx it is socialist society which realizes "concretely" the religious principles of equality, brotherly love, and freedom."
"Why did I adopt kids? I dunno. Let me look at my family: religious weirdo, gun nut, biker, boozer, dead tooth, too many cats, the guy who talks to his truck. Hmm. Maybe I adopted because genetically my balls are full of poison."
"You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility."
"Right now, culturally, we're seeing a really interesting evolution in ideas about spirituality and the world, right? The number of people who consider themselves to be religious and going to services is dropping, and the number of people who consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious is increasing."
"I imagine it great vanity in me to suppose that the Supremely Perfect does in the least regard such an inconsiderable nothing as man. More especially, since it is impossible for me to have any positive, clear idea of that which is infinite and incomprehensible, I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
"The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects,as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind."
"The Divine Thing that made itself the foundation of the Church does not seem, to judge by his comments on the religious leadership of his day, to have hoped much from officers of a church."
"One of the things that sets the Bible apart from all other ancient religious writings is its scientific accuracy. Without exception, every other ancient religious writing contains certain scientific errors. For example, Muhammad taught in the Qur'an that the sun descends down into a muddy spring. The Hindu Vedas state that the Earth is flat and triangular, that earthquakes are caused by elephants shaking themselves under it. You'll never read absurd statements like those in the Bible."
"Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others."
"I am constantly concerned about being quoted in the press and perhaps saying the wrong thing or having what I say misinterpreted and bringing reproach to the name of Christ. People do not come to hear what Billy Graham has to say; they want to hear what God has to say. Jesus tells us not to be misled by the voices of strangers. There are so many strange voices being heard in the religious world of our day. We must compare what they say with the Word of God."
"Much of the philosophy of religious education has been based upon a false premise, and perhaps many have missed the essence of Christian experience, having had religious training take its place."
"To preach of peace and brotherhood, oh what might be the cost? A man he did it long ago, and they hung him on a cross."
"Homo sapiens Yuck You contemporary fools laugh at religious and political lies spewed by sociopaths, lies that tether you forever to poverty and mediocrity. Yet, when your ears come upon the truth, the facts of life, you hide your faces and cry, not able"
"If once in America the question of religious toleration was raised in defense of nonbelievers who dissented from religious orthodoxy, today it is raised by believers who feel excluded from a predominantly secular public world."
"A man's moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from Nature during his lifetime."
"e idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein."
"The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious it makes little or no difference."
