quotations about religion
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
No religion is better than an unnatural one.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Religion, like the law of gravity, binds each element of our nature to its own orbit. It gives the peace of a harmonious character, where the moral and intellectual powers hold their lawful spheres, and the appetites fill their restricted place, and the law of purity and holiness reigns supreme.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The Church must be intelligible to the simple as well as to the shrewd.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
A City Set on a Hill
The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.
J. D. SALINGER
Zooey
True religion is a life unfolded within, not something forced on us from abroad.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Where there is only a show of religion, there is only an imagination of happiness.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Religion sows within us the seeds of an undying joy that fails not when outward means of happiness fail, and sorrows darken, and cares appall. It sheds abroad a holy serenity in the heart, and imparts a calm lustre to the brow.... It reveals new sources of happiness. It makes the spire of grass and the star beautiful ministers of delight.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Ever since he repented of religion and shaved off his clerical beard and mustache, he has had the constant feeling that he has taken off his trousers, and that his nose protrudes altogether indecently and must at all cost be covered.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
"X", The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
Never believe in any faith younger than you are.
DAHLIA LITHWICK
"Everything Vibrates", Slate, November 12, 2008
Imagine that the brain is a computer and that religion is a virus. Atheism is the wiping of that virus.
NICK HARDING
News Talk, January 25, 2016
RELIGION being the chief band of human society, it is a happy thing, when itself is well contained within the true band of unity. The quarrels, and divisions about religion, were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion of the heathen, consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief. For you may imagine, what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors, and fathers of their church, were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, that he is a jealous God; and therefore, his worship and religion, will endure no mixture, nor partner. We shall therefore speak a few words, concerning the unity of the church; what are the fruits thereof; what the bounds; and what the means.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Unity in Religion", Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible
Myths are lies; but I believe in the power of myths the way I believe in rocks ... rulers have had the various pantheons carrying water for them since the first con man met the first sucker, and priestcraft was born. That was long enough ago that they were probably both walking on their knuckles.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands
Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no means, of resisting them.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
The spirit of religion is a reconciling spirit.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
If our existence is limited only to this world, religion is still of the greatest consequence, as more largely determining character, and more vastly influencing happiness, than any other single cause; and if it extends to a life beyond, it is of incalculably greater importance, as determining character and influencing happiness through illimitable periods of time. Indeed, without a belief in the being of God, without a recognition of his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and without faith in a divine system of rewards and punishments, wrought into the constitution of things, life is at once stripped of its majesty, and bereaved of its noblest promises.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
Indifference in religion is more fatal than skepticism. There is no pulse in indifference; skepticism may have warm blood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit