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Quotes about religion

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Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book IV, Ch. 18
- Anti-Religion
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Introduction to Ward’s English Poets (1880)
- Poetry
The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.
William Blake1757–1827The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1818)
- Christianity
Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.
Freeman Dyson1923–2020Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 1: In Praise of Diversity
- Science
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification.
Simone Weil1909–1943“Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine” as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
- Atheism
- Faith
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Jesus7 BC–AD 30The Gospel of John (1611), Gospel of John 17:3 (KJV)In context
- Christianity
- God
Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
Simone Weil1909–1943“Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine” as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
- Atheism
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.
Susan B. Anthony1820–1906Speech at the NAWSA convention (1896) against a resolution disavowing Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible; in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. IV (1902)
- God
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Jesus7 BC–AD 30The Gospel of John (1611), Gospel of John, 13:34–35 KJVIn context
- Christianity
- Love
There is no sudden entrance into Heaven.
Slow is the ascent by the path of Love.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox1850–1919The Way (1913).
- Love
The crazier you get as a Jain, the less we have to worry about you. Jain extremists are paralysed by their pacifism.
Sam Harrisborn 1967Sam Harris, Lecture at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley (November 10, 2010)
Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 107
Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
Simone Weil1909–1943Last Notebook (1942) p. 308
- Atheism
All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) Section III, “The Politicians”.
- Anti-Religion
- Laws
Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey.
Clarence Darrow1857–1938In a debate with religious leaders in Kansas City, as quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)
- Anti-Religion
- Happiness