Quotes about religion (4430 quotes, page 11)

“It is the general authority to undertake the establishment of religion through the revival of religious sciences, the establishment of the pillars of Islam, the organization of jihad and its related functions of maintenance of armies, financing the soldiers, and allocation of their rightful portions from the spoils of war, administration of justice, enforcement of [the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes (hudud)], elimination of injustice, and enjoining good and forbidding evil, to be exercised on behalf of the Prophet… It is no mercy to them to stop at intellectually establishing the truth of Religion to them. Rather, true mercy towards them is to compel them so that Faith finds a way to their minds despite themselves. It is like a bitter medicine administered to a sick man. Moreover, there can be no compulsion without eliminating those who are a source of great harm or aggression, or liquidating their force, and capturing their riches, so as to render them incapable of posing any challenge to Religion. Thus their followers and progeny are able to enter the faith with free and conscious submission… Jihad made it possible for the early followers of Islam from the Muhajirun and the Ansar to be instrumental in the entry of the Quraysh and the people around them into the fold of Islam. Subsequently, God destined that Mesopotamia and Syria be conquered at their hands. Later on it was through the Muslims of these areas that God made the empires of the Persians and Romans to be subdued. And again, it was through the Muslims of these newly conquered realms that God actualized the conquests of India, Turkey and Sudan. In this way, the benefits of jihad multiply incessantly, and it becomes, in that respect, similar to creating an endowment, building inns and other kinds of recurring charities.… Jihad is an exercise replete with tremendous benefits for the Muslim community, and it is the instrument of jihad alone that can bring about their victory.… The supremacy of his Religion over all other religions cannot be realized without jihad and the necessary preparation for it, including the procurement of its instruments. Therefore, if the Prophet’s followers abandon jihad and pursue the tails of cows [that is, become farmers] they will soon be overcome by disgrace, and the people of other religions will overpower them.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

People , Exercises , Way , God

“Why do I need this protection? I am not a president or a king; I am a mere member of the Dutch Parliament, one of 150 elected parliamentarians in the Tweede Kamer, the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, a small country of 16.5 million in Western Europe. However, I have joined Westergaard in a rapidly growing group of individuals throughout the world who have been marked for death for criticizing Islam. For asserting our rights to say what we really think about this political ideology that disguises itself as a religion, we have been hounded by Muslims seeking to make an example of us. Offend us, they are saying to the world, and you will end up in hiding like Wilders, attacked like Westergaard, or dead like van Gogh.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 1, p. 5

Death , World , Thinking , Housing

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 105
2000s, (2008)

Children , People , Truth , Question

“It has been the White Race who has been the world builder, the maker of cities and commerce and continents. It is the White Man who is the sole builder of civilizations. It was he who build the Egyptian civilization, the great unsurpassed Roman civilization, the Greek civilization of beauty and culture, and who, after having been dealt a serious blow by a new Semitic religion, wallowed through the Dark Ages, finally extricated himself, and then build the great European civilization.”

Ben Klassen (1918–1993) American engineer, author and politician

Nature's Eternal Religion (1973), Ch. 2, Paragraph 2
Nature's Eternal Religion (1973)

Age , World , Beauty

“The generation of young people that questioned the establishment in the '60s is now middle-aged, and has become the establishment itself. Moral absolutes have been eliminated, "feel-good" religions created, and free sex legitimized, paving the way for disposable marriages. The results of these tailor-made values are new strains of sexually transmitted diseases, more potent drugs, more broken families and out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates and worrisome suicide rates.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Christine
O'Donnell
Opposite Attraction; Pitching Abstinence to the Young and the Restless at the HFStival
1997-06-15
The Washington Post
C1
2010-09-15
Remembering Christine O'Donnell: Praising Helms, Missing Lenny and Squiggy, and Worries of Rampant Satanism
Kyle
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/remembering-christine-odonnell-praising-helms-missing-lenny-and-squiggy-and-worries-rampant-
2010-10-20

Marriage , People , Age , Disease

“I don't believe you until you tell me, do you really believe, for example, if they say they are Catholic, "Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?" Mock them. Ridicule them. In public. Don't fall for the convention that we're all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Reason Rally, National Mall, Washington, DC,

Universe , Wine , Christ

“The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 17

Law , Nature , Time

“I think there’s a reason why wine figures into so many religions. There’s something transcendent about it. It’s sort of the way that music is more than the sum of its parts. You have all these elements that make up the terroir that wine can communicate.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

Matthew Lickona (December 24, 2008) "Hedonistic" http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/dec/24/Hedonistic/, San Diego Reader.

Music , Way , Communication , Thinking

“The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe. In the end, Religion will kill us all.”

Ed Krebs (1951) American photographer and musician

Had Enough Religious Bullshit http://www.edkrebs.com/herb/, Ed Krebs' site.

World

“The Telegraph dated May 14 carried a PTI report datelined Islamabad, May 13: “Pakistan’s minister of state for religious and minority affairs, Mr. Maqbool Ahmed Khan, said today that the petition against the Quran moved in the Calcutta high court was the ‘worst example of religious intolerance.’ The Pakistan President. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, was quoted by an Urdu daily as saying that the facts of the case were being ascertained. Mr. Khan alleged that religion and life and property of minorities were unsafe in India and urged the Indian government to ‘follow the example of Pakistan’ in ensuring freedom of religion…. Thus the theocratic state of Pakistan made it an occasion for delivering lectures to Indians on the subject of religious freedom and the rights of minorities. Nobody who was anybody in India at that time is known to have reacted to this assault from an Islamic state which had driven out most of its Hindu minority, and was treating the rest as non-citizens.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Life , Quotes , Freedom , Time

“In the course of life, all such systems (i. e., the different evolutionary ridges) are somewhat functionally interdependent, as are components within each system (i. e., the different programs, schema, modules). Nevertheless, each system and system component has a somewhat distinct evolutionary history and time line. There is no single origin of religion, nor any necessary and sufficient set of functions that religion serves. Rather, there is a family of evolutionary-compatible functions that all societies more or less realize but that no one society need realize in full.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 12
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Life , Family , History , Time

“I am now convinced that the Reformation of the church will come from the east. In the west there is no spiritual life. (I'm speaking of the Protestant church and not the Roman Catholic church.) We have civilisation and we try to keep up culture, but we have no spiritual life. The east has a spiritual life. They know that colour influences the spirit more than black lines. In Russia there is still the notion that art is nearer religion than thinking in lines and logic. All abstract rationalising needs to be filled out with sensual thinking and feelings. In Russia there is still a strong impression of colour.”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Statement on his admiration of the Eastern Orthodox traditions (1982), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 207

Life , Art , Feeling , Thinking

“I have never understood why Catholics of culture take pains to deny or to explain away the fact that the Roman Church is not only a religion but also a secular system of government, and that the Church as representative of God upon earth may eo ipso claim — and always has claimed — absolute power in all things of this world.”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

God , Pain , World

“Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

Speech (7 November 1860).
1860s

“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.

Life , Understanding , Nature

“The central psychological endeavor of Kierkegaard may be summed up under the heading of the question he pursued relentlessly: How can one become an individual? The individual was being swallowed up on the rational side by Hegel's vast logical "absolute Whole," on the economic side by the increasing objectification of the person, and on the moral and spiritual side by the soft and vapid religion of his day. Europe was ill, and was to become more so, not because knowledge or techniques were lacking but because of the want of passion, commitment. ""Away from Speculation, away from the System," he called, and "back to reality!"”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Discovery of Being (1983), p. 69

Question , Knowledge , Reality , Passion

“Science is not religion. We're not going to be able to answer the "why" questions. But when you put together all of what we know about the universe, it fits together amazingly well.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

Question , Universe , Science

“In other periods of depression it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground for hope — nothing of man. But there is still religion, which is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That continues as a solid basis for hope and courage.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Conversation with Charles Andrews (1 January 1933), quoted in Coolidge: An American Enigma (2000).
1930s

Hope , Courage

“My aversion to them…springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society—I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Memoirs from the Declaration of the War with Spain (1746)

Men , Hate , Error , Spring

“My religion is truth, love and service to God and humanity. Every religion that has come into the world has brought the message of love and brotherhood. Those who are indifferent to the welfare of their fellowmen, whose hearts are empty of love, they do not know the meaning of religion.”

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) Indian independence activist

Quoted from the Progressive February 2002

Love , God , Truth , World

“A major component of the western myth is the belief that myth is a primitive and mistaken way of thinking about the world that has been replaced by science. Commonly, the word “myth” is now used to mean an illusion or a lie… Enlightened moderns are accustomed to looking at the queer beliefs of the Mayas or the Tassaday and seeing them as mythical. But we look on our own belief systems as rational and rooted in the realities of politics and economics. As Joseph Campbell says: “Myth is other people’s religion.””

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 20

People , Lie , World , Way

“Whether religion is a divisive or reconciling force depends on our certainty or our humility as we practice our faith in our politics.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 16
Faith and Politics (2006)
Context: Whether religion is a divisive or reconciling force depends on our certainty or our humility as we practice our faith in our politics. If we believe that we know God's truth and that we can embody that truth in a political agenda, we divide the realm of politics into those who are on God's side, which is our side, and those with whom we disagree, who oppose the side of God. This is neither good religion nor good politics. It is not consistent with following a Lord who reached out to a variety of people — prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers. If politics is the art of compromise, certainty is not really politics, for how can one compromise with God's own truth? Reconciliation depends on acknowledging that God's truth is greater than our own, that we cannot reduce it to any political platform we create, no matter how committed we are to that platform, and that God's truth is large enough to accommodate the opinions of all kinds of people, even those with whom we strongly disagree.

Faith , Dependency

“Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.”

E.L. Doctorow book Billy Bathgate

Billy Bathgate (1989), Ch. 19

Love , God , People , Making love

“My pro-life position is I believe there's life. It's not necessarily based in religion. I think there's a life there, therefore the notion of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle (January 23, 2001)
2000s, 2001

Life , Thinking , Happiness

“Still more serious was the emergence of an insidious image of Hindu personality as a direct result of this loss of the national perspective on Indian history. In due course, most Hindus, particularly the English-educated Hindu elite, have been made to believe that a Hindu is not true to himself nor to his religion and culture unless he 1) honours as his own heroes all those invaders and crusaders who demolished his temples, desecrated the images of his Gods and Goddesses, burnt his Shãstras, humiliated his holy men, dishonoured his women, pillaged his property, massacred his countrymen en masse, sold his children into slavery, trampled upon every symbol of his religion and culture, and coerced his co-religionists to swear by an aggressive and intolerant dogma glorified as the Kalima; 2) shows reverence for an ideology of calculated and cold-blooded gangesterism masquerading as the only true religion; 3) pays homage to all those pretenders, scoundrels, and hoodlums which this ideology presents as its sufis, saints and heroes; 4) practises patience and tolerance towards those who vow openly and work ceaselessly to destroy his religion and culture, and to take forcible possession of his homeland; and 5) is always prepared to surrender everything he possesses or cherishes in order to avoid violence and bloodshed.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders (1984; 2001)

Women , Men , God , Children

“The religion of hinduism says that if you’ve been bad, you may come back as a rat or some other animal. If you’ve been good, you might come back as a prince. But that’s like someone saying, “when you jump out of the plane, you’ll get sucked back in as another passenger. If you’ve been bad, you go down to the Economy Class; if you’ve been good, you go up to First Class.” It’s an interesting concept, but it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

God , Hell , Problem , Reality

“When religion abandons poetic utterance, it cuts its own throat.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967)

“From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert… that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom , God , Age , Beauty

“Let not one bring Learning, another Diligence, another Religion, but every one bring all.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Meditation 7
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Learning

“If by religion, we are understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." But if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be, as you again say, "something not fit to be named, even indeed, a hell."”

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

Letter to John Adams, 5 May 1817, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Lipscomb-Bergh edition, 1903), Volume XV, p. 109
1810s

World , Hell , Understanding , Parting

“Very shortly the temple was once again a wonder of the world, and the Ephesian Church settled down to a long reign marked only by the usual bitter quarrels, heresies, and internal dissent through which all major faiths struggle.
Any religion begins in a moment of transforming truth. That moment quickly shatters into falsehood and shame and stagecraft, bitter comedy, sometimes murder. Thieves catch hold of any chance for power. The early years of a faith are best not too closely examined by its faithful.”

Kage Baker book The Life of the World to Come

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 12, “Alec Solves a Mystery” (p. 201)

Truth , World , Faith , Chance

“Henry of Essex's religion was the Inner Light or Moral Conscience of his own soul; such as is vouchsafed still to all souls of men;—which Inner Light shone here 'through such intellectual and other media' as there were; producing 'Phantasms,' Kircherean Visual-Spectra, according to circumstances! It is so with all men. The clearer my Inner Light may shine, through the less turbid media; the fewer Phantasms it may produce,—the gladder surely shall I be, and not the sorrier! Hast thou reflected, O serious reader, Advanced- Liberal or other, that the one end, essence, use of all religion past, present and to come, was this only: To keep that same Moral Conscience or Inner Light of ours alive and shining.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men , Soul , Light , Past

“Many nights I stood on the bridge — and in the middle alone — lost — a defenseless prey to the surrounding swarming darkness — crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers — here and there lights resembling suspended falls of astral bodies or fantastic splendors of remote rites — shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion, like blood in the arteries—at times, ringing as alarm in a tempest, the shrill sulphurous voice of the trolley wires — now and then strange moanings of appeal from tugboats, guessed more than seen, through the infernal recesses below — I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new DIVINITY.”

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist

Source: "The Brooklyn Bridge (A page of my life)," 1929, p. 88; Cited in: Beth Venn, Adam D. Weinberg. Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950 : Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art. University of California Press, 1999. p. 123

Mountain , Light , Time , Training

“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 9
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

“The human journey is, at its core, about the extension of empathy to broader and more inclusive domains. At first, the empathy extended only to kin and tribe. Eventually it was extended to people of like-minded values – a common religion, nationality or ideology. In the 19th century, the first humane societies were established, extending the empathy to include our fellow creatures. Today, millions of people, under the banner of the animal rights movement, are continuing to deepen and to expand human concern for, and empathy toward, our fellow creatures.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

“Man and Other Animals: Our Fellow Creatures Have Feelings – So We Should Give Them Rights Too,” in The Guardian (16 August 2003) https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/aug/16/animalwelfare.world

People , Animals

“Reason will take us so far on firm ground. But then there must be the leap in the same direction, if the truth of those facts in religion which are only reached by faith are to be enjoyed... It is taking the road of evidence as far as it will go and then, with the energy provided by meditating on the character of God as Christ revealed him, making a leap of faith, only to land finally in a conviction as strong as proof can supply.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.79 [ellipsis added]

God , Truth , Faith , Strong

“Well if you reduce religion to social work, so does USAID produce…do all that. Actually, a secular organization, actually rather more convincingly. Most of the great philanthropist of the united states have been atheists…doesn't prove that atheism is correct.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2007
Source: Hannity's America, May 13, 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created

“Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3

Hope

“Faith as well as science endowed the visible world with properties that eliminated blind, incalculable chance as the author of all events. The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order…”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

One Human Minute (1986)

War , World , Faith , Universe

“The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.”

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

Pt. V, ch. II, sec. V.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

God , World , Effort

“It is important to note that humans are a subset of apes, being members of the taxonomic superfamily Hominoidea. This is no arbitrary classification, but one that is objectively verifiable through phylogenetics. This is a fact that can be proven regardless what you would rather believe. Yet no religion either accounts for this fact nor even acknowledges it, as it stands against all their collective mythology.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, The Cow http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/01/22/the-cow/ (January 22, 2016)

“There has been the conflict between science and religion. Science was the interpretation from the past that is considered today as hermeneutics, but the conflict concerns the experimental science. If we ask the scientists what is the science, they will not have a correct answer. Because they are so concerned with this issue that they can also be far from it. It is said that "human knows more than what he says". This indicates the existence of the implicit knowledge in the humans. The essence of science is ambiguous.”

Khosrow Bagheri (1957) Iranian philosopher of education

Knowledge , Science , Past

“This led me to extend my inquiry into the origin of all religions, and this again led to an enquiry into the origin of nations and languages; and ultimately I came to a resolution to devote six hours a day to this pursuit for ten years. Instead of six hours daily for ten years, I believe I have, upon the average, applied myself to it for nearly ten hours daily for almost twenty years. In the first ten years of my search I may fairly say, I found nothing which I sought for; in the latter part of the twenty, the quantity of matter has so crowded in upon me, that I scarcely know how to dispose of it.”

Godfrey Higgins (1772–1833) British archaeologist

Undated letter at Godfrey Higgins http://burghwallis.com/village/articles/higgins.htm biography.

Search , Parting

“My patriotism is subservient to my religion. I cling to India like a child to its mother’s breast, because I feel that she gives me the spiritual nourishment I need. She has the environment that responds to my highest aspiration.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

Feeling

“At that period, everybody in the Roman Empire had some kind of religion, but nobody bothered much about it. Just like today. …Although Romans had plenty of gods, in reality they believed in none.”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Things have got to change -but how? It's Either this or that! p. 146 Walking with God is no illusion. p. 208
Jesus Our Destiny

God , Reality

“We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I just bought a Macintosh.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

“I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Secularism in its present Indian form is no more than an embodiment of anti-Hindu animus, and is supported by all those who want to destroy Hindu society and culture. Secularism is essentially a political concept which originated and took shape in nineteenth century Europe. …. It was in this atmosphere of revolt against Christianity and its closed culture that the concept of Secularism was evolved and employed in country after country in Europe. The secular power of the State was no longer to be the secular arm of the Church. It was to become secular on its own, that is, a power which secured equal rights to all its citizens without bothering about their beliefs. The Church was separated from the State which was no longer supposed to interfere with the religious life of the citizens, or to discriminate against any citizen on the basis of his on her religion or absence of it. Religion was now to be treated as a purely private matter in which the state was not supposed to pry, and which was not to be projected in public affairs.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Life , Support , Country

“Shiite Islam was revived and transformed by Iranians in direct reaction not only against western separation of religion from political-economic life, but more comprehensively against the transformation of their way of life by western political-economic power.”

Richard A. Horsley (1939) Biblical scholar

Source: Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003), p. 72

Life , Way

“Our religion teaches us that every human being is unique and must play his part in working out his own salvation. So whereas socialists begin with society, and how people can be fitted in, we start with Man, whose social and economic relationship are just part of his wider existence. Because we see man as a spiritual being, we utterly reject the Marxist view, which gives pride of place to economics…The religious tradition values economic activity, how we earn our living, create wealth, but warns against obsession with it, warns against putting it above all else. Money is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Greater London Young Conservatives (Iain Macleod Memorial Lecture - "Dimensions of Conservatism") (4 July 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103411
Leader of the Opposition

Money , People , Parting , Wealth

“The admission to heaven is faith in Jesus Christ. He is the only way. There is no other philosophy, no religion, no other way.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 133

Faith , Way , Christ

“You and yours at the Circle, you're gonna save all the souls. You're gonna get everyone in one place, you're gonna teach them all the same things. There can only be one morality, one set of rules. Imagine! Now all humans will have the eyes of God. You know this passage? 'All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of God.' Something like that. You know your Bible? Now we're all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon, every other. We'll see what He sees. We'll articulate His judgment. We'll channel His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of God's will. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Man, to Mae and Francis; pp. 398-399
The Circle (2013)

God , Soul , Imagination , Forgiveness

“The defeatists should fear Allah lest they distort this religion and cause it to become weak on the basis of the claim that it is a religion of peace. Yes, it is the religion of peace but in the sense of saving all of mankind from worshiping anything other than Allah and submitting all of mankind to the rule of Allah.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

[Fiqh al-Da’wah, Fiqh al-Da’wah, IslamQA, http://web.archive.org/web/20061017053855/http://www.islamqa.com/index.php?ref=43087&ln=eng, 217–222, 2007-11-22, 2006-10-17]

Fear , Peace , Sense

“Oh Man, being exalted in humanity, may you be triumphant here and in heaven.
Oh! Friend! May your love spread everywhere and may you develop the feeling "everyone is dear to me." May you shine with grand inner quintessence and effulgence. Develop faith in the righteous path that is gentle and devoid of contamination.
As a result, may auspiciousness come to you from everywhere.
Let not religion, country or caste divide you.
May you develop inclination towards the Absolute Reality.”

Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji (1942) Indian guru

Jaya Jaya Bhuvi Divi Manava (2002)

Love , Faith , Feeling , Reality

“The idea of revelation is the idea of special knowledge of God, or of religious truth, possessed by some people and transmitted by them to others. In some form or other the idea is reasonable. In all other matters people differ in their degree of skill or insight. Why not in religion?”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1984)

God , People , Truth , Idea

“Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say that religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now. There is, after all, nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 90-91

Nature , Past

“I began my previous Beliefnet column with the line, "Throughout history, religion has been the single greatest source of human-caused wars, suffering, and misery. In the name of God, more suffering has been inflicted than by any other manmade cause." I was, of course, using the word "religion" in its sociological meaning, as any belief invested with "ultimate concern," in which case not only Islam, Christianity, and Shintoism are religions, but Marxism, Nazism, and Eco-terrorism are all versions of religions or religiously held beliefs. Seen as such, the opening sentence is obviously true.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Which Level of God Do You Believe In? (2004)

God , War , History , Suffering

“Love is the foundation of all obedience. Without it, morality degenerates into mere casuistry. Love is the foundation of all knowledge. Without it religion degenerates into a chattering about Moses and doctrines and theories; a thing that will neither kill nor make alive, that never gave life to a single soul or blessing to a single heart, and never put strength into any hand in the conflict and strife of daily life.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 400.

Love , Life , Soul , Knowledge

“The trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam (is) also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force.”

Wafa Sultan (1958) American psychistrist

Wafa Sultan, cited in: N. C. Munson, Noel Carroll. If You Can Keep It, Allen-Ayers Books, 2010, p. 215

“Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 21

Food

“Portugal converted a portion of India to the Catholic religion with the arms of her soldiers, with the blood of her martyrs, with the miracles of her saints, and with the fires of her Inquisition. Those who were vanquished in this struggle became Christians and Portuguese. England might imitate the example, except as regards force.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Quoted by Nishitha Desai in Lusotopie 2000, p. 474

“Though the way of religion has thorns in it with respect to persecution, yet it is full of roses with respect to that inward peace and contentment that the soul finds in it.”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

From Heaven Taken By Storm, Soli Deo Gloria Publications edition, pg. 73.

Peace , Way , Soul

“Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

Art , Literature , Problem

“There is no question that religions have historically played the role of making people contented with their lot. …such a doctrine would be very appealing to the ruling classes of a society. …Many societies, for this reason alone, encourage the contentment with your lot that the religious premise of heaven affords.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

People , Question

“What's really hurting me, the name Islam is involved, and Muslim is involved and causing trouble and starting hate and violence. … Islam is not a killer religion. … Islam means peace, I couldn't just sit home and watch people label Muslims as the reason for this problem.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

As quoted in "Muhammad Ali Defends His Religion" by Lisa L. Colangelo and Clem Richardson in New York Daily News (21 September 2001), p. 34

Hate , People , Peace , Home

“The very idea that there is some kind of conflict between science and religion is completely mistaken. Science is a method for investigating experience… Religion is the fundamental, necessary internalization of our system of more permanent values.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Idea , Science

“Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Freedom

“Neurosis was caused by our attempt to separate physical and metaphysical levels, to set them up in opposition to each other, thus engaging in an internecine war. If it is true that we do live on several levels simultaneously- drama and action, past and present, personal and collective- we are given ways to unify them: one by religion, the other by art. Separating such levels is only necessary when they conflict, and separation is a result of conflict. Seeing how these levels can work together in harmony is the task of our contemporary writers.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

War , Art , Way , Past

“Indian', [mom said], you will write Indian. And if they have a problem with that let them come and talk to me. They have no business asking you your religion. How is that the basis for an educational qualification?”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

Reply to her daughter Pooja Bedi who was filling a form in the school in [Bedi, Ibrahim, Pooja, Timepass, http://books.google.com/books?id=8Ykpao-TL-AC, April 2003, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-028880-3, vii]

Education , Moms , Business , Problem

“I cannot approve of monarchs who want to rule over the conscience of the people, and take away their freedom of choice and religion.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

1564- Havo Exam

People , Freedom

“…The result of burning embassies and treading on flags is the self-same objective these drawings wanted to highlight. It was their intention to say that Muslims are terrorists and their religion is a peril to Western civilization.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2000s, Burning embassies is not the way (2008)

Drawing

“Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter I
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Life , Personality , Forgetting

“When most of Europe was still illiterate, the Hutterites had established a system of primary schools. Among them education was compulsory. They believed that their movement depended on an educated people who could practice discipleship in light of New Testament teachings. Of course, the state churches felt no such need. Their religion was primarily in the hands of religious professionals. The layman's chief function in such ecclesiastical systems was to obey. For this purpose ignorance served as well as, if not better than, knowledge.”

William Roscoe Estep (1920–2000) American theologian

The Anabaptist Story (1996), p. 142

People , Education , School , Knowledge

“The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Life Thoughts (1858), p. 18

“… the fact is that while we have become the most religious of any of the predominantly Christian first world nations, (due to repeated surges in rural revivalism) the US in its infancy was once the most secular government in history. The original colonies were primarily peopled by refugees fleeing religious persecution in other countries. But almost upon arrival, the Puritans only continued that practice against native Shaman, then against Quakers, and even each other –over religious differences. Catholics to the South were even worse! The founding fathers however were largely Deists, the least devout form of theism. They were brilliant men who knew better than to let religion rule over law because theocracy has in all instances almost automatically violated human rights and it inevitably always does. Consequently, the irreligious and non-Christian framers of the American Constitution produced the first government ever to grant all its citizens the right to religious freedom, and they did so by forbidding the government from sponsoring or promoting one religion over any other. Because it is not possible to have freedom of religion without having freedom from religion.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"5th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmbnxtnMB4, Youtube (January 14, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men , People , World , Law

“You can find some religions without creationism, but you can’t find creationism without religion.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 61

“The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 32.

Parting

“If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 22–23
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real

Truth , Star , Personality

“This extremist ideology is not true Islam. I have said it myself many, many times, and it’s absolutely right to do so. And I’ll say it again today. But simply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work, because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims. … It is an exercise in futility to deny that. And more than that, it can be dangerous. To deny it has anything to do with Islam means you disempower the critical reforming voices; the voices that are challenging the fusing of religion and politics; the voices that want to challenge the scriptural basis which extremists claim to be acting on; the voices that are crucial in providing an alternative worldview that could stop a teenager’s slide along the spectrum of extremism.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)

Exercises , Time

“Religion should be something you keep within the confines of your own head, and we should all recognize how pointless it is to try and make other people see the fairies that live in your brain.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/7473-Extra-Punctuation-Videogames-as-Art.2
Other Articles

People

“My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 72
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest

“Many of us associate the Christian faith as a list of do's and dont's, to be sure. But the Christian life is to be oriented in relationship, why is there so much talk of formula? Could it be that the reason we are more interested in forumla than relationship is that we would like to deal with our need for religion without dealing with the complications of relationship? That even though we have chosen the Christian faith instead of "poppycock religion," we ultimately want the same thing as the pagan? And what is that? Easy answers, comfortable sentiments, beliefs that make us feel good. So we go through the motions. We go to our churches, we read our self-help books, we watch our religious television, and we check each item off our to-do list as if we were doing work for pay. One thing I am sure of. This is not the kind of real-life faith I'm looking for.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Life , Books , Faith , Feeling

“The proper form of science is explanation and argument, and the proper form of religion and morality is exhortation and command; but that of art is simply the directest embodiment of its theme as the theme itself requires. Assured that the theme is compatible with the ideal nature of art, the artist knows that it will justify itself and work its own work, if it can only find expression in its natural embodiment.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.201-2

Art , Nature , Science

“Business leaders, of course, had long been working to "merchandise" themselves through the appropriation of religion. In organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization, the prayer breakfast groups, and the Freedoms Foundation, they had linked capitalism and Christianity and, at the same time, likened the welfare state to godless paganism. After decades of work, these businessmen believed their efforts had finally paid off with the election of Dwight Eisenhower.”

Kevin M. Kruse (1972) American historian

Source: One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (2015), p. 86

Business , Effort , Freedom , Time

“I feel that segregation is totally unchristian, and that it is against everything the Christian religion stands for.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

In his letter to Sally Canada (19 September 1956), as quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr (1992), by Carson & Holloran, Volumes 2-3, p. 373
1950s

Feeling

“I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Source: 1880s, Garfield's Words (1882)

“It was the test of loyal citizenship among the Romans to seek out in every part of the world that which was most rare and valued, and bring it back to Rome as a gift. Thus her sons went forth and returned laden with richest trophies to lay at her feet. They brought to her pearls from India, gold chariots from Babylon, elephants from interior Africa, high-breasted virgins from the Greek isles, Phidian marbles from Athens. Paul also would be a bringer of gifts to the Rome that had honored him and his fathers with the high honor of citizenship. And the gift he would bring and lay at her feet would be the richest of them all—a religion.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 229

World , Parting

“I learned later that economic reasoning was not just mathematics and could be applied to a wide variety of social problems. Now, I think that no forms of social interaction—including religion, love, crime, and fertility choice—are immune from the power of economic reasoning. Hence, even widely held beliefs—for example, that beauty is an illegitimate credential of a worker or that democracy is important for economic growth—are not sacred truths and are subject to analysis.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. xiii

Love , Truth , Beauty , Democracy

“Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.” … “My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”… “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

[The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”
James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London,l829,1957), 2 vols., I quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

People , Age , Art , Music

“Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners … I believe in Gandhi’s philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

"Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi Are Awarded Nobel Peace Prize" by Alan Cowell and Declan Walsh, in The New York Times (10 October 2014)

Help

“Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

People , World , Understanding , Universe

“In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

“I wear this Saint Christopher medal sometimes because — I'm Jewish — but my boyfriend is Catholic. It was cute, the way he gave it to me. He said if it doesn't burn through my skin, it will protect me. Who cares? Different religions.
The only time it's an issue, I suppose, would be like if you're having a baby and you've got to figure out how you want to raise it. Which still wouldn't be an issue for us, because we'd be … honest, and just say, you know, like, "Mommy is one of the chosen people … and daddy believes that Jesus is magic!"”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Jesus Is Magic (2005)

People , Way , Time , Baby

“A dark old world was devastated by wars between conflicting religions. A dark modern world faces wars between conflicting economic and political fanaticisms in which are intertwined race hatreds.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Address at Chautauqua, New York (1936)

War , World

“Having liberated the key to a liberatory interpretation and contextualization of the Qur'an, the issue of patriarchal and misogynic interpretations of the Qur'an becomes a societal issue rather than an issue of the religion.”

Yasser Harrak Canadian liberal writer, columnist and human rights activist

Yasser Harrak. 2016. "The Patriarchal Characterization Of Islam". UnpublishedOttawa. Accessed June 23,2016. http://unpublishedottawa.com/letter/78752/patriarchal-characterization-islam

“The truth that Dostoevsky puts in the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor is that humankind has never sought freedom, and never will. The secular religions of modern times tell us that humans yearn to be free; and it is true that they find restraint of any kind irksome. Yet it is rare that individuals value their freedom more than the comfort that comes with servility, and rarer still for whole peoples to do so.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: The Grand Inquisitor and Flying Fish (p. 123)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

People , Truth , Freedom , Time

“The main condition is that the spiritual ear should be open to overhear and patiently take in, and the will ready to obey that testimony which, I believe, God bears in every human heart, however dull, to those great truths which the Bible reveals. This, and not logic, is the way to grow in religious knowledge, to know that the truths of religion are not shadows, but deep realities.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 37.

God , Truth , Way , Knowledge

“I think there is in this country a war on religion. I think there is a desire to establish a religion in America known as secularism. And I know that, based on reports, that the Obama administration gave this a lot of thought – a lot of discussion. This was not some little side issue that no one thought about. They gave it a lot of thought, and they decided to say that in this country that a church — in this case, the Catholic Church — would be required to violate its principles and its conscience and be required to provide contraceptives, sterilization, and morning after pills to the employees of the church. And that came as a shock. As I think it was Mike Huckabee said, "We are now all Catholics."”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Those of us who are people of faith recognize this is — an attack on one religion is an attack on all religion.
2012-04-03
Romney: Obama wants to ‘establish a religion called secularism’
David
Edwards
The Raw Story
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/03/romney-obama-wants-to-establish-a-religion-called-secularism/
2012-04-13
2012

War , People , Faith , Thinking