Quotations

Quotes about religion: Part 2

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Religious quotations continued from Part 1

Religious quotes, Part 2:

	John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: "I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
	Anon: "The worst thing you can do to a dogma is give it an empire."
	Anon: "People consider themselves to be orthodox, and everyone else to be a heretic."
	Anon: "And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the holy books were used to beat plowshares into swords."
	Aribi: "My heart is open to all the winds... Wherever God's caravans turn, The religion of love shall be my religion and my faith." Aribi was a 13th century Sufi traveler and mystic.
	"Ashlynn:" "Beware any 'Spiritual Path' that claims to be the one true path to Enlightenment." 5
	Napoleon Bonaparte: "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
	Sir Richard F. Burton: "The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself."
	Bruce Buursma: The Chicago Tribune: "Almost every story around the world has a religion sub-plot"

	William O. Douglas: Supreme Court Justice, 1952: "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."
	Albert Einstein: "...science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
	Sinclair Ferguson: "The goal of theology is the worship of God. The posture of theology is on one's knees. The mode of theology is repentance."
	Benjamin Franklin, from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", 1728-NOV-20: "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."
	Johan Galtung: "Every religion contains, in varying degrees, elements of the soft and the hard. For the sake of world peace, dialogue within religions and among them must strengthen the softer aspects."
	Mahatma Ghandi: "It it weren't for Christians, I'd be a Christian."
	Sam Harris: "A glance at history, or at the pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion." 6
	Thomas Jefferson: In a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813: "History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." In a letter to Mrs. Samuel Smith, 1815-AUG-06:  "I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another.  I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed.  I have judged others' religions by their lives, for it is from our lives and not our words that our religions must be read. ...it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest."
	Philip Jenkins: "If we're not careful, fifty years from now we may find a largely secular North defining itself against a largely Christian South. This will have its implications." 3 [He was referring to the global North and South, not the American North and South.]
	His Holiness the Dalai Lama: "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
	John Lennon: From the lyrics of his 1971 song "Imagine:" "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above only sky....Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too."
	James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785: "What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."

	Bill Maher, from his one-person show "Victory Begins At Home:" "All religion is a bureaucracy between man and God."
	Richard Nilsen: Arizona Republic columnist: "We have reached an uncomfortable impasse. We need belief to make life meaningful, yet we cannot allow ourselves to believe in anything. Every faith, institution, political faction and ideal has proved at some level to be a tissue of hypocrisy. We decry our own cynicism, but recognize that, at some level, it is merely realism. Some [people] retreat into conventional orthodoxies; others free-float, aimless in an increasingly valueless society. But there is another alternative: starting from scratch to see if we may discover for ourselves something like universal truth and build the whole thing over again."
	Osho: "It is a time either to destroy the whole earth or to destroy all these arbitrary conceptions of nation, race, religion, and make the whole earth one humanity."
	Thomas Paine: "Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."
	Bertrand Russell: "My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the  opportunity."
	Carl Sagan: "A religion that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by traditional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
	Seneca the Younger: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
	Ahmad Mahmud Soliman: "Religion and science are like a two-branched river. They have the same source and flow into the same sea."
	Farrell Till: "Information is religion's greatest enemy, and in an age when information is just a few keyboard strokes away from anyone with a computer, this is going to pose a greater threat to Christianity than anything it has yet 'survived.' "
	George Tucker: "Why does it benefit us to believe a fairy tale and condemn those who decline to accept it, or who believe another fairy tale?" Tucker is a volunteer reviewer for Amazon.com. The quotation is from a review of Taner Edis, "The Ghost in the Universe: God in light of modern science"
	Jesse Ventura: Governor of Minnesota, 1999, in an interview with Playboy: "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business."
	Alan Watts: from "The Essence of Alan Watts series - GOD": Many people think that the bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the bible, making it an idol..."
	Steven Weinberg: "...on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful...With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil--that takes religion." 4
	Israel Zangwill: "Scratch a Christian, and you find the pagan -- spoiled."

References:

1. Bailey Smith was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times, 1994-JUN-26.
2. "Converting a child: Jewish boy caught by Southern Baptists' evangelizing," ABC News, 2000-MAY-12, at: http://abcnews.go.com/
3. Toby Lester, "Oh gods!," Atlantic Monthly, 2002-FEB, at: http://www.theatlantic.com/
4. Steven Weinberg, "Facing Up : Science and Its Cultural Adversaries," Harvard University Press, (2001), Page 242. Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
5. From: Ashlynn's Grove: Pagan Information Resource, at: http://paganism.com/
6. From: Sam Harris: "The end of faith: Religion, terror and the future of reason," W.W. Norton, (2004). Read reviews or order this book
7. On 2005-DEC-08, memorials and remembrances were held world-wide to commemorate the assassination of John Lennon, the former Beatle.  In his hometown of Liverpool, UK, an official memorial service was held at Our Lady and St. Nicholas, the city's Anglican church. Unfortunately, the church refused to allow one of Lennon's best known anthems to peace to be sung -- even though its message is more important and critical today that it was when he was alive. (Consider the religiously-motivated disturbances, mass murders and genocides since 1980 in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, etc.) The church did reach an accommodation with the memorial organizers. They allowed the music but not the words to be performed. I wonder if the congregation resisted breaking into unauthorized song as the music was played.
8. Mark Juergensmeyer, "Terror in the mind of God: The global rise in religious violence," University of California Press, (2000). Read reviews and/or order this book
9. Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark."
10. Jagad Guru,"Ancient wisdom," at:  http://www.jagadguruchrisbutler.org/

Copyright © 1996 to 2009 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Copyrights for the individual quotations are normally held by their authors
Last updated: 2009-JAN-21
Compiled by: B.A. Robinson

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