“Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Context: Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme. Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the mere emotions and the conceptual experiences produce a life-tedium, unless this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual justification, and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration.

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Alfred North Whitehead 112

English mathematician and philosopher 1861–1947

P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) British philosopher

Source: Individuals (1959), p. 2.

“Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone.”

Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly

Source: The Soul of a Butterfly (2004), p. xvi
Context: Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved. Religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone.

“Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Miles King (26 September 1814)
1810s
Context: Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone. I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right.

“To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, pp. xvii–xcviii (c. 1798–1809)
1790s

“We can now return to the distinction between language and symbolism. A symbol is language and yet not language. A mathematical or logical or any other kind of symbol is invented to serve a purpose purely scientific; it is supposed to have no emotional expressiveness whatever. But when once a particular symbolism has been taken into use and mastered, it reacquires the emotional expressiveness of language proper. Every mathematician knows this. At the same time, the emotions which mathematicians find expressed in their symbols are not emotions in general, they are the peculiar emotions belonging to mathematical thinking.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: The Principles of Art (1938), p. 268

“I think intelligence has a kind of range of sense and allows us to contemplate the coexistence of the conceptual aspect of thought and the emotional aspect of thought as ideally wedded, troth-plight, and the circumstances in which this troth-plight can be effected are to be found in the medium of language itself.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

Interview, The Paris Review No. 80, Spring 2000 http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/730/the-art-of-poetry-no-80-geoffrey-hill

“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.

“You are the emotion of life that is renewed every moment to your thought alone.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Sei l'emozione della vita che si rinnova ogni istante al solo tuo pensiero.
Source: prevale.net

“I have come to guide humanity to a higher path. I do not belong to any particular religion, but respect all religions. I seek the elevation of all mankind. (…)”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

29 July 1983
The Teachings of Babaji

“If dialectical logic understands contradiction as “necessity” belonging to the very “nature of thought,” … it does so because contradiction belongs to the very nature of the object of thought, to reality, where Reason is still Unreason, and the irrational still the rational. Conversely, all established reality militates against the logic of contradictions — it favors the modes of thought which sustain the established forms of life and the modes of behavior which reproduce and improve them. The given reality has its own logic and its own truth; the effort to comprehend them as such and to transcend them presupposes a different logic, a contradicting truth. They belong to modes of thought which are non-operational in their very structure; they are alien to scientific as well as common-sense operationalism. … These modes of thought appear to be a relic of the past, like all non-scientific and non-empirical philosophy. They recede before a more effective theory and practice of Reason.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 142

“Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone.”

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Alfred North Whitehead 112

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