Religious Quotations

Quotations of a divine inspiration? Or possibly simply concerning some aspect of religion.

Showing 37 through 72 of 162 quotations in this category.

"Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think."

-Arthur Shopenhauer

"Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there."

-Mohammed Neguib

"Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God."

-Jean Rostand

"It bemuses me that the more outspokenly 'Christian' somebody is, the more that person emphasizes the pre-Christian books of the Bible rather than the books that quote Jesus."

-MECowan (on the web)

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

-Galileo Galilei

"What about the homosexual Buddhist? Do you think he really care's about your bible?"

-SheepNumber97245 (on the web)

"Two men please God--who serves Him with all his heart because he knows Him; who seeks Him with all his heart because he knows Him not."

-Nikita Ivanovich Panin

"My captor walked up to me and with his sandal drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away. This is my faith. The faith that unites and never divides, the faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity. That is my religious faith, and it is the faith I want my party to serve and the faith I hold in my country."

-Senator John McCain

"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction."

-Blaise Pascal

"The God understood as a father figure, who guided ultimate personal decisions, answered our prayers, and promised rewards and punishment based upon our behavior was not designed to call anyone into maturity."

-John S. Spong

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls."

-Albert Einstein

"I just converted out of Christianity because I saw how ironic it was that god created us as flawed creatures and expects us to thank him for saving us from our flaws."

-CrimeAgainst (on the web)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."

-Voltaire

"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one."

-Thomas Jefferson

"Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employ a million."

-Mark Twain

"The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind,
Mine speaks in Parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates,
Thy heaven-doors are my hell gates."

-William Blake

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

-Marcus Aurelius

"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."

-Victor Hugo

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."

-Thomas Paine

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

-Thomas Jefferson

"I fear God, and next to God I chiefly fear him who fears Him not."

-Saadi

"They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse."

-Emily Dickinson

"Political language--and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind."

-George Orwell

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

-Albert Einstein

"Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?"

-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"You must believe in God, in spite of what the clergy say."

-Benjamin Jowett

"Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven."

-Milton

"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

-Clarence Darrow

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

-Woody Allen

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."

-Charles Bukowski

"God is not a cosmic bell-boy for whom we can press a button to get things."

-Harry Emerson Fosdick

"A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"I have made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord,make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

-Voltaire

"There is a commandment against bearing false witness against my neighbor. Is there no commandment against bearing false witness against God? If I were a god, I would reserve my greatest wrath, not for those who ignored me, nor for those who contradicted me, but for those who falsely quoted me."

-Martin B. Brilliant

"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."

-Edmund Burke

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."

-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche