Interesting quotes:

On topics from: Prayer to Religion

Included are quotes on: prayers, prejudice, privilege,
purpose, reality, reason, & a link to a list of quotes on religion.

Prayers:

	Anon: in any war, religious folks on both sides are praying for opposite outcomes, often to the same God.
	Anon; a Wiccan prayer: "May the Gods always stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk."
	Epicurus, Greek philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE) "If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another."
	Abraham Lincoln, at the time of the Civil War: "I'm driven to my knees by the conviction that I have nowhere else to go."
	The Rev. Bailey Smith, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention: "With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew." Spoken during a talk before 15,000 people at a Religious Roundtable meeting in Dallas TX. The audience responded with enthusiastic applause. ₁
	Lily Tomlin: "Why is it that when we talk to God, it's called prayer, but when God talks to us, it's called schizophrenia?"
	Mark Twain: "Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea?"
	Steven Weinberg, in his book: "Dreams of a Final Theory:" "If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers.

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Prejudice:

Carl Sagan: "Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us -- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame flutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir." ₂

Privilege:

	Anon: "When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
	Anon: "Equality can feel like oppression. But it’s not. What you’re feeling is just the discomfort of losing a little bit of your privilege."
	Anon: "Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally"

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Purpose:

Anon:

"If I can throw a single ray of light across the darkened pathway of another;

if I can aid some soul to clearer sight of life and duty, and thus bless my brother or sister;

if I can wipe from any human cheek a tear, I shall not have lived my life in vain while here.

If I can guide some erring one to truth, inspire within his heart a sense of duty;

if I can plant within my soul of rosy youth a sense of right, a love of truth and beauty;

if I can teach one person the Goddess is near, I shall not then have lived in vain while here.

If from my mind I banish doubt and fear, and keep my life attuned to love and kindness;

if I can scatter light and hope and cheer, and help remove the curse of mental blindness;

if I can make more joy, more hope, less pain, I shall not have lived and loved in vain.

If by life's roadside I can plant a tree, beneath whose shade some wearied head may rest,

though I may never share its beauty, I shall yet be truly blest--though no one knows my name, nor drops a flower upon my grave,

I shall not have lived in vain while here."

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Reality:

	Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626 CE): "The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
	Mike Howerton: "Unless you spend the time it takes to know yourself, you will continue to project your own issues on the people that surround you, or sometimes even the places in which you find yourself." ("Miles to cross", Page 70)
	Tsao Hsueh-chin: "When the unreal is taken for the real, the real becomes unreal."
	Voltaire: "Those who believe absurdities end up committing atrocities"
	One of this website's mottos: "When some people deviate from reality, others are often hurt."

Reason:

	Galileo Galilei: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
	Khalil Gibran: "For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction".
	Goya: "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels."
	George Bernard Shaw: "There is only one religion, although there are a hundred versions of it."
	Jonathan Swift: "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
	Alfred North Whitehead: "We think in generalities, but we live in details."

Religion:

For essays on religion: See quotes by authors with names starting A to P and quotes by authors Q to Z

References used:

"Converting a child: Jewish boy caught by Southern Baptists' evangelizing," ABC News, 2000-MAY-12, at: http://abcnews.go.com/
Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark."

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Copyright � 1996 to 2015 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Copyrights for the individual quotations are normally held by their authors
Last updated: 2015-DEC-09
Compiled by: B.A. Robinson

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