Religious Quotations

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

Showing 73 through 108 of 162 quotations in this category.

"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."

-Edmund Burke

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

-Voltaire

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

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

-Harry Emerson Fosdick

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

-Woody Allen

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

-Emily Dickinson

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

-Saadi

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

-Benjamin Jowett

"Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable."

-H. L. Mencken

"God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown."

-Friedrich Neitzsche

"It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are."

-Ovid

"Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven."

-Mark Twain

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."

-John Morley

"What if we chose the wrong religion? We're just making God madder and madder every Sunday."

-Homer Simpson

"Religion has come to mean placing our trust outside ourselves, remaining like children following a long succession of father figures, teachers, preachers, and politicians. And how do we know, once we have ceased to trust ourselves, whether they are Gods or psychopaths?"

-xX_Fairuza_Xx

"All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only ancient follies."

-Baron D'Holbach

"Everything Hitler did to the Jews, all the horribly unspeakable misdeeds, had already been done to the smitten people before by the Christian churches. . . . The isolation of Jews into ghetto camps, the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people - Hitler learned it all from the church. However, the church burned Jewish women and children alive, while Hitler granted them a quicker death, choking them first with gas."

-Dagobert Runes

"Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand . . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race."

-Bertrand Russell

"The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

-George Bernard Shaw

"To insist on a spiritual practice that served you in the past is to carry the raft on your back after you have crossed the river."

-Buddha

"A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows."

-Mark Twain

"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

"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 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

"An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question."

-John McCarthy

"There is no room in this for the divinization of a nation, of a class, let alone of an individual. Are we not all children of one father, as it is said in religious language?"

-Albert Einstein

"I came-- though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents -- to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve."

-Albert Einstein

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

-Albert Einstein

"In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."

-Albert Einstein

"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."

-Albert Einstein

"To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot."

-Albert Einstein

"Fundamentalism means never having to say 'I'm wrong.'"

-unknown

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

-Susan B. Anthony

"I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present enduring."

-William Archer

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."

-Aristotle, "Politics"

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."

-Isaac Asimov