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Quotes about religion

498 quotes from 232 people

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I regard [religion] as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)
- Anti-Religion
The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920), Part I, The Present Condition of Russia, Ch. 1: What Is Hoped From Bolshevism
- Anti-Religion
- Politics
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
- Anti-Religion
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
- Anti-Religion
- Morality
There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), “The Moral Problem”
- Anti-Religion
- Christianity
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
He asked my religion and I replied ‘agnostic’. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: ‘Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.’
Bertrand Russell1872–1970The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
- Comedy
In so far as religion makes its appeal to fear, it is lowering to human dignity.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 107
- Anti-Religion
- Fear
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
- Anti-Religion
- Knowledge
Jesus knew — knew — that we’re carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we’re all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Zooey (1957)
- Christianity
The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Zooey (1957)
- God
How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don’t even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it’s right in front of your nose?
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Zooey (1957)
Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls — but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up?
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Zooey (1957)
- Christianity
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VI
- Debate
Stated most straightforwardly, most of earth’s humans have inherited their beliefs about the nature of birth and death and everything in between and thereafter from preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists.
Robert Sapolskyborn 1957Behave (2017), ch. 9, “Centuries to Millennia Before”, p. 313
- History