“The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things… after the weather.”

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: Organised religion has corrupted one of the purest, most powerful and sustaining things in the human condition. It has imposed a middle management, not only in our politics and in our finances, but in our spirituality as well. The difference between religion and magic is the same as what we were talking about earlier – I think you could map that over those two poles of fascism and anarchism. Magic is closer to anarchism.

Quoted by John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, The Use of Life, chapter IV: "Recreation" (1894).

As quoted in "A close encounter with Chris Carter" at Salon (28 April 2000) http://www.salon.com/2000/04/28/chriscarter/
Context: The most difficult thing to reconcile is science and religion … And so we created a 
dilemma for her character that plays right into Mulder’s hands. So that cross she wears,
 which was there from the pilot episode, is all-important for a character who is torn 
between her rational character and her spiritual side. That is, I think, a very smart
 thing to do. The show is basically a religious show. It’s about the search for God. You 
know, "The truth is out there." That’s what it’s about.

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 9 : Of the Religions of the Utopians
Context: Those among them that have not received our religion do not fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion. He being newly baptised did, notwithstanding all that we could say to the contrary, dispute publicly concerning the Christian religion, with more zeal than discretion, and with so much heat, that he not only preferred our worship to theirs, but condemned all their rites as profane, and cried out against all that adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious persons, that were to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon his having frequently preached in this manner he was seized, and after trial he was condemned to banishment, not for having disparaged their religion, but for his inflaming the people to sedition; for this is one of their most ancient laws, that no man ought to be punished for his religion.

Part 3: Of Fate And Predestination; Opening sentence
On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy
Context: This is one of the most intricate problems of religion. For if you look into the traditional arguments () about this problem you will find them contradictory; such also being the case with arguments of reason. The contradiction in the arguments of the first kind is found in the Qur'an and the Hadith.

[Andy Rooney, w:Andy Rooney, 8, Weather, Years of Minutes, 2003, PublicAffairs, 978-1586482114]

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 62

The Twelve-Pound Look (1910)

Many Long Years Ago (1945), A Watched Example Never Boils