Arthur Penrhyn Stanley quote: “Christianity is, above all other religions ever known, a religion of sacrifice. It is a religion founded on the greates…”

“Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

What is Religion? (1893)
Context: I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.

“All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice — that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

“The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Russell Francis Farnen (1996) Democracy, socialization, and conflicting loyalties in East and West. p. 52
1990s and attributed

“They won't be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters (7 March 1773)
1770s

“Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: It is the business of the preacher, not only to state moral truths, but to inspire his hearers with a realising sense of their value, and to awaken in them the desire to act accordingly. He can do this only by putting his own purpose as a yeast into their hearts. The influence of the right sort of preachers cannot be spared. The human race is not yet so far advanced that it can dispense with the impulses that come from men of more than average intensity of moral energy.
Let us produce, through the efficacy of a better moral life and of a deeper moral experience, a surer faith in the ultimate victory of the good.
Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?

“God descends with a purpose. From the earliest times sacrifice (yajña) had been accounted the most important work, and in the Gītā so imperative a work is sacrifice considered that we are told that 'ever on sacrifice firm-founded is Brahman all pervading.”

W. Douglas P. Hill (1884–1962) British Indologist

Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 34. (19.(c) Kṛiṣṇa as avatāra has a definite work to do)

“Politics requires sacrifice. The sacrifice of others, of course.”

Michael Dobbs House of Cards

Source: House of Cards

“I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

What is Religion? (1893)
Context: I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.

“Superstition attaches to this life, and religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these same desires that we are religious.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Ten Years' Exile (Dix années d'exil, written 1810–1813, posthumously published 1821), ch. 16

“Christianity is, above all other religions ever known, a religion of sacrifice. It is a religion founded on the greatest of all sacrifices, the sacrifice of the Incarnation, culminating in the sacrifice on Calvary.”

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