“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

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

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Olaf Stapledon 113

British novelist and philosopher 1886–1950

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“Religion in terms of “personal experience is an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing and autonomous character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organizes all experiences. It is the reaction to the whole of man to the whole of reality. It may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

marginal note in Moncure D. Conway's Sacred Anthology
quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)

“True religion, namely a fundamental affirmation of the meaning of life, is something without which no human being can be healthy in personality.. . . What happens to mental health when this meaning which religion gives is absent? In other words, what is the effect of atheism on personality?. . . I have been startled by the fact that practically every genuine atheist with whom I have dealt has exhibited unmistakable neurotic tendencies.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

The Ultimate Source of Meaning, Awake! magazine, october 22, 1980.
Others

“The inflexible integrity of the moral code is, to me, the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of History.
If we may debase the currency for the sake of genius, or success, or rank, or reputation, we may debase it for the sake of a man’s influence, of his religion, of his party, of the good cause which prospers by his credit and suffers by his disgrace. Then History ceases to be a science, an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the Wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and religion itself tend constantly to depress. It serves where it ought to reign; and it serves the worst cause better than the purest.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504; also in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)

“By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 4, Magic and Religion.

“Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“A sign is not only something which stands for something else; it is also something that can and must be interpreted.”

Umberto Eco book Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

[2] Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia, 2.1 : Porphyry strikes back, 2.1.1 : Is a definition an interpretation?
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: A sign is not only something which stands for something else; it is also something that can and must be interpreted. The criterion of interpretability allows us to start from a given sign to cover, step by step, the whole universe of semiosis.

“Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998)
Context: There is arguably no more important and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable.

“I say that politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Political institutions are secular by definition and operate in independent spheres. All my predecessors have said the same thing, for many years at least, albeit with different accents. I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I'm here.
2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

“Religions which depend upon arguments are failures. A religion, to be aggressive, must be experimental; men must be something and do something by means of it, which would be otherwise impossible; then they become both rhetoric and logic — persuasion and proof.”

Charles Henry Fowler (1837–1908) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 137.

“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.”

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Olaf Stapledon 113

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