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Quotes about religion

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There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practise it while they hear.
Henry Ward Beecher1813–1887Life Thoughts (1858), p. 61
- Comedy
For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.
Gerald Ford1913–2006Speech to the International Eucharistic Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as quoted in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (13 August 1976)
Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Anti-Religion
The Churches as Churches have always been and cannot fail to be institutions not only alien to, but directly hostile towards, Christ’s teaching.
Leo Tolstoy1828–1910The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter III, Christianity Misunderstood by Believers
- Anti-Religion
- Christianity
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
Voltaire1694–1778“Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition,” Treatise on Toleration (1763)
The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion — except for the sect that can win political power.
Robert H. Jackson1892–1954Zorach v. Clauson (1952), 343 U.S. 325
- Freedom
The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away.
W. Somerset Maugham1874–1965The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 1, p. 8
- Clever Jabs
Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
- Debate
Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion.
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lamaborn 1935“Kindness and Compassion” p. 47.
- Charity
Whatever, over and above good life-conduct, man fancies that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is mere religious delusion and counterfeit worship of God.
Immanuel Kant1724–1804Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), Book IV, Part 2, Section 2
- God
Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.
Ramakrishna1836–1886Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960) (152)
- Wisdom
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lamaborn 1935“Kindness and Compassion” p. 52
- Charity
He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Canby (18 September 1813)
- Morality
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkinsborn 1941Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival (15 April 1992)
- Anti-Religion
- Faith
Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.
Sigmund Freud1856–1939The Future of an Illusion (1927), Ch. 3