“Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.”

Hotchkiss
1900s, Getting Married (1908)
Context: Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can't see the quintessential equality of all the religions.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you …" by George Bernard Shaw?
George Bernard Shaw photo
George Bernard Shaw 413
Irish playwright 1856–1950

Related quotes

“No religion is perfect, not after man gets through with it.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

Dinesh D'Souza photo

“Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Article http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html for The Christian Science Monitor (21 November 2006).

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
William J. Brennan photo

“Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.”

William J. Brennan (1906–1997) American judge

Writing for the court, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).

Frank Sinatra photo

“[On religion] I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, benzedrine or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.”

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American singer and film actor

The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)

George Eliot photo
Robert Jordan photo

Related topics