“Organized religions by their very natures are misleading.”

—  Frank Zappa

Oui interview (1979)
Context: Organized religions by their very natures are misleading. The bottom line is always money. What that’s got to do with your spiritual well-being still eludes me. It’s always the bucks, no matter how they disguise it. If you need that sort of assistance to keep yourself together, you may be paying a higher rate to a fake religion than you would to a psychotherapist. Which is not to say that a psychotherapist is going to give you any better value per dollar either. lf you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual. If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you. Because it all comes from inside. As a matter of fact, that’s where it stays.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Organized religions by their very natures are misleading." by Frank Zappa?
Frank Zappa photo
Frank Zappa 129
American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and fil… 1940–1993

Related quotes

Aga Khan III photo

“Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

In a letter dated 4th April, 1952 to Dr. Zahid Husain, President of Arabiyyah Jamiyyat, Karachi.
Context: Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion.

Michael Moore photo

“There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

The capped crusader, The Guardian, 4 October 2003, Gary, Younge http://www.guardian.co.uk/michaelmoore/story/0,,1055591,00.html,
2003

Julian Huxley photo

“There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: The entire cosmos is made out of one and the same world-stuff, operated by the same energy as we ourselves. "Mind" and "matter" appears as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity.

Fulton J. Sheen photo

“However useful it is for pedagogical purposes, the biological metaphor of style as a sequence of life-stages was historically misleading, for it bestowed upon the flux of events the shapes and behavior of organisms.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 8 as cited in: Pamela M. Lee, " " Ultramoderne": Or, How George Kubler Stole the Time in Sixties Art. http://xenopraxis.net/readings/lee_ultramoderne.pdf" Grey Room (2001): 55.

“There is, I believe, something, which may be named by the misleading and debased word 'religion', and is the most distinctively human or awakened activity of man. But clearly there is something else, which is also called 'religion', and is his greatest folly and shame.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Other texts
Source: Waking World, Chapter 11: Religion http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/wakingworld_ch11.html

“Organized religion: The world's largest pyramid scheme.”

Cited in: Jack Huberman (2008). Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political ...

Walter Lippmann photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“The socialism of continental Europe, taking it by and large, is actively hostile, not only to bad forms of organized religion, but to religion itself.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 109

Julian Huxley photo

“Such major organizations of thought may be necessary in science as much as in religion.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: Eventually the old ideas will no longer serve, the old ideological framework can no longer be tinkered up to bear the weight of the facts, and a radical reconstruction becomes necessary, leading eventually to the emergence of a quite new organisation of thought and belief, just as the emergence of new types of bodily organization was necessary to achieve biological advance. Such major organizations of thought may be necessary in science as much as in religion. The classical example, of course, was the re-patterning of cosmological thought which demoted the earth from its central position and led to the replacement of the geocentric pattern of thought by a heliocentric one. I believe that an equally drastic reorganization of our pattern of religious thought is now becoming necessary, from a god-centered to an evolutionary-centered pattern.

Related topics