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.
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.
—true love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity.
Natural science wants man to learn, religion wants him to act.
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.