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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.

Random quote on Religion

Most quoted on religion:

Secret sins commonly lie nearest the heart.

Thomas Brooks Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

There is the seed of all sins—of the vilest and worst of sins—in the best of men.

Thomas Brooks Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.

Andrew Jackson Attributed

True repentance has as its constituent elements not only grief and hatred of sin, but also an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. It hates the sin, and not simply the penalty; and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered God's love.

William Mackergo Taylor Attributed Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Of right and wrong he taught
Truths as refined as ever Athens heard;
And (strange to tell!) he practised what he preach’d.

John Armstrong Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

When thou art preparing to commit a sin, think not that thou wilt conceal it; there is a God that forbids crimes to be hidden.

Tibullus Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.

Samuel Butler Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

The sin that now rises to memory as your bosom sin, let this first of all be withstood and mastered. Oppose it instantly by a detestation of it, by a firm will to conquer it, by reflection, by reason, and by prayer.

William Ellery Channing Attributed Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind,
Hath look’d on no religion scornfully
That men did ever find.

Matthew Arnold Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.

Patrick Henry Attributed

It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion, which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought.

William Ellery Channing Attributed Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

You cannot stay the shell in its flight; after it has left the mortar, it goes on to its mark, and there explodes, dealing destruction all around. Just as little can you stay the consequences of a sin after it has been committed. You may repent of it, you may even be forgiven for it, but still it goes on its deadly and desolating way. It has passed entirely beyond your reach; once done, it cannot be undone.

William Mackergo Taylor Attributed Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.

Albert Einstein Attributed The Private Albert Einstein (1992)

I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality as it is accessible to human reason. Wherever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism. ... I cannot accept your opinion concerning science and ethics or the determination of aims. What we call science has the sole purpose of determining what is. The determining of what ought to be is unrelated to it and cannot be accomplished methodically. Science can only arrange ethical propositions logically and furnish the means for the realization of ethical aims, but the determination of aims is beyond its scope. At least that is the way I see it.

Albert Einstein Attributed Einstein and Religion (1999)

I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.

Isaac Newton Disputed

Terrorism, which means killing civilians in whatever name or title, lacks morality, and nobody who lacks such principle will go to heaven.

Mohammad Khatami Attributed

Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes.

William Law Attributed

If hell could be redeemed, you Mary would obtain his grace.

John Vianney Attributed

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

Avicenna Misattributed

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

Averroes Misattributed

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