Quotes about religion (4430 quotes, page 44)

“Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 28, Part 5 (Footnote 2)

Future , Faith , Communication

“The way I see it, people should get around their differences and spend more time understanding their religion. In that way we will become a better person and be more accommodative of others. Among other things we will not become possessive, which is one of the root causes of fiction in relationships.”

Dominic Su Haw Chiu (1939) Malaysian prelate

"Bishop Dominic Su 70th Birthday & 40th Anniversary of Priestly Ordination Celebration." https://www.catholic.my/shc/magazine/BishopSuInterview02.htm (December 5, 2009)

Time , Understanding , Way , Personality

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.”

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

Wisdom , Knowledge , Science

“America's freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, offers every wisdom tradition an opportunity to address our soul-deep needs: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism among others.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Soul , Freedom , Wisdom

“It is easy to criticize the "fanaticism" of our ancestors when one has lost the very notion of saving truth, or to be "tolerant" when one derides religion.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2006, Light on the Ancient Worlds, World Wisdom, 9, 978-0-941532-72-3]
Miscellaneous, Modernity

Truth

“One of the effects, among others, of modern science has been that of mortally wounding religion by posing in concrete terms problems which esoterism alone can resolve and which remain unresolved because esoterism is not heeded and is heeded less now than ever. Faced by these new problems, religion is disarmed, and it borrows clumsily and gropingly the arguments of the enemy, and this obliges it to falsify its own perspective imperceptibly and disavow itself more and more; its doctrine is certainly not affected, but false opinions borrowed from its repudiators corrode it insidiously "from within", as witnessed by modernist exegesis, the demagogic leveling of the liturgy, Teilhardian Darwinism or the "sacred art" of surrealist and "abstract" persuasion.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2006, Light on the Ancient Worlds, World Wisdom, 27, 978-0-941532-72-3]
Miscellaneous, Religion

Falseness , Problem , Science , Art

“Religion translates metaphysical or universal truths into dogmatic language; now though dogma is not accessible to all men in its intrinsic truth, which can only be directly attained by the Intellect, it is nonetheless accessible through faith, which is, for the great majority, the only possible mode of participation in the Divine Truths. As for intellectual knowledge, which proceeds neither from belief nor from a process of reasoning, it goes beyond dogma in the sense that, without ever contradicting the latter, it penetrates its internal dimension, that is, the infinite Truth that dominates all forms.”

Frithjof Schuon book The Transcendent Unity of Religions

[1993, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Quest Books, xxxi, 978-0-8356-0587-8]
Miscellaneous, Religion

Knowledge , Sense , Men , Universe

“Without religion − or without authentic religion − a human collectivity cannot survive in the long run; that is, it cannot remain human.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2003, The Play of Masks, World Wisdom, 12, 978-0-94153214-3]
Miscellaneous, Religion

“Hell is an element of any religion which is morally healthy.”

James Moffatt (1870–1944) British theologian

as quoted by Miles H. Krumbine in: [Review of What Is Hell?, The Journal of Religion, 10, 3, 1930, 435–436, 0022-4189, 10.1086/480965]

Hell

“God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
To give the heavy laden rest
And peace from sorrow, sin, and strife.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

Creed or Christ (1909)

God , Peace , Truth , Christ

“Of all the arts, music makes the most direct appeal to the emotions and to those shadowy, but real portions of our being called the imagination and the soul. Emotion is as indispensible to music as love to religion.”

Walter Raymond Spalding (1865–1962) American music pedagogue and author

Page 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3.
Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

Soul , Imagination , Art , Music

“Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.”

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

Opening statement.
1870s, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Motivation , Men

“He that is willing to tolerate any religion, or discrepant way of religion, besides his own, unless it be in matters merely indifferent, either doubts of his own, or is not sincere in it.”

Nathaniel Ward (1578–1652) Puritan clergyman and pamphleteer in England and Massachusetts

In 1647, as quoted in "Free Speech and Its Present Crisis" https://www.city-journal.org/free-speech-crisis (2018), by Allen C. Guelzo, City Journal

Indifference , Sincerity , Way

“Dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

September 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/the-dogma-of-dianne-feinstein.html to Amy Coney Barrett

Drawing , Law , Reading , Thinking

“The rules of your religion do not apply to people who do not believe in it so let people live the way they want.”

Zhiar Ali (1999) Kurdish human rights activist and artist

Ali on freedom to choose one's religion and lifestyle, via Twitter.

People , Way

“Nobody has done more for Christianity or for evangelicals — or for religion itself — than I have.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Quoted in "Donald Trump Claims Nobody Has Done More 'for Religion Itself' Than Him" https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-claims-nobody-has-done-more-religion-itself-him-1635036, Newsweek, 2 October 2021
2021, October 2021

“I’ve never seen a religion that wasn’t basically evil.”

Rudy Rucker book Master of Space and Time

Source: Master of Space and Time (1984), Chapter 10, “God’s Laws” (p. 72)

Evil

“The most important thing is that we would like people to reach some kind of mutual understanding, so that these huge mixed nationalities, religions, social order, finally understand each other, if possible ... And then everything would fall into place, and there are no more desires would not be.”

Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990) Soviet rock musician (1962-1990)

"Appendix I. Viktor Tsoi: interview diary" https://ik-ptz.ru/en/istoriya/prilozhenie-i-viktor-coi-dnevnik-intervyu-fragmenty-iz-odnoimennoi.html

People , Understanding