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Religion Quotes

Religion is a page where believers and unbelievers share space. Shakespeare and Milton lead, but Robert Ingersoll and the biologist Jerry Coyne are close behind, and the sourced favourites lean sceptical: Bertrand Russell in Sceptical Essays (1928) on moralists and Hell, Bierce in 1911 calling religion a daughter of Hope and Fear.

Three entries are flagged. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep” is credited to the missionary Jim Elliot, and the notes call it a paraphrase of the English clergyman Philip Henry (1631–1696). Newton’s remark that he could calculate the motions of heavenly bodies but not the madness of the people is disputed, and it is usually tied to the South Sea stock bubble. A line about Earth and Heaven credited to David Hare is flagged misattributed.

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Most quoted on religion:

[L]ow-keyed respectability...is the real religion of the English people.

Maurice Cowling The Present Position (1978)

Religions do not teach doubt.

Gregory Benford Timescape (1980)

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

As many colors of the rainbow are an outcome of one pure light, the many religions of the world are an expression of one divine source.

Sadhguru

God knows no religion. God belongs to mankind. I realized this while playing at the Balaji temple.

Bismillah Khan

Even though you acknowledge diverse religions, you all presuppose in all of this diversity the one, which you call wisdom

Nicholas of Cusa De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Emancipation from the bondage of nature can only be brought about by the religion of Mitzvoth

Yeshayahu Leibowitz Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State (1995)

Moving away from religion has made me mature.

Umberto Veronesi

Human beings are social beings with or without religion.

Leo Igwe An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

The shengren is above philosophy and beyond religion. He is decisively not European. This will be read in a thousand years.

Thorsten J. Pattberg Shengren (2011)

We forget that it was the religion of abolitionists that led them not to pray against slavery but to stand against slavery.

William Barber II

This amendment to the Indian Penal Code was coupled with an emerging understanding of religion as rooted exclusively in sentiment.

C. S. Adcock

We can assume that a perfect world IS the ultimate goal for mankind and the purpose of God, for this has been promised to us in all religions.

Vera Stanley Alder Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950)

Some people let their countries become their religions and that didn't work either. (p174)

Naomi Shihab Nye Habibi (1997)

Women are transforming western religion--six thousand years of male monotheism will not be defeated overnight, but I hope to help.

Alicia Ostriker Conversations with the World by Phebe Davidsen (1998)

Joining the Mafia is like converting to a religion. You never stop being a priest. Or a Mafioso.

Giovanni Falcone

I was raised Catholic, and I have an aversion to anyone who takes religion to the extreme.

Conor Oberst

These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes.

Robert G. Ingersoll What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)

condemning religions as a whole would be like wanting to destroy a garden because weeds have disfigured it.

Varadaraja V. Raman

Between religion's "this is" and poetry's "but suppose this is" there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.

Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957)

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