Religious quotes
7.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Marriage can be a religious thing. It can also be a secular thing. And guess what? Not everyone in the world is of the same religion. Preventing gay people from getting married is not an expression of religious freedom. It's an expression of religious oppression."
"...the tale that's told for no other reason but companionship, which is another (and my favorite) definition of literature, the tale that's told for companionship and to teach something religious, of religious reverence, about real life, in this real world which literature should (and here does) reflect."
"... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction betweenour present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority."
"I do pray. I pray to something...up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess."
"In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today."
"Not merely by rules of conduct and religious observances, nor by much learning either, nor even by attainment of concentration, nor by sleeping alone, do I reach the happiness of freedom, to which no worldlings attain. If you have not put an end to compulsions, nurse your faith"
"If I had even a slight awareness, and practiced the Great Way, what I would fear would be deviating from it."
"Don't blindly believe what I say. Don't believe me because others convince you of my words. Don't believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts."
"Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God"
"I loathe the mess of mean superstitions and misunderstood prophecies which is still rammed down the throats of children under the name of Christianity."
"There is nothing in religion but fiction."
"... it is seldom a medical man has true religious views--there is too much pride of intellect."
"We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education."
"When we have sold our identity to the judges of this world, we are bound to become restless, because of a growing need for affirmation and praise."
"I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity."
"People will find some ways of identifying themselves, becoming associated with others, taking part in something. They're going to do it some way or other. If they don't have the options of participation in labor unions, political organizations that actually function, they'll find other ways. Religious fundamentalism is a classic example."
"There have, for years, been comparative studies of religious fanaticism and factors that correlate with it. By and large, it tends to decline with increasing industrialization and education. The US, however, is off the chart, ranking near devastated peasant societies. About 1/2 the population believe the world was created a few thousand years ago: the justification for the belief is that that is what they were ordered to believe by authority figures to whom they were taught one must subordinate oneself. And on, and on."
"The United States is off the international spectrum in religious extremism."
"I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought."
"In short, then, the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man, and the sorcerer is older than the priest."
