Quotes on Religion

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

What I've found is that the religion that matters, the real religion is love.

The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.

The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.

The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. That, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church, in a nutshell.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.

Although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, our religion was not the same. I could stand with my family or with the gentiles... but there was no foothold in between.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

I think enormous harm is done by religion - not just in the name of religion, but actually by religion. ... Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Spirituality is meant to take us beyond our tribal identity into a domain of awareness that is more universal.

It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.

As a historian of American and African-American religion, I know that the Trayvon Martin moment is just one moment in a history of racism in America that, in large part, has its underpinnings in Christianity and its history. Those of us who teach American Religion have a responsibility to tell all of the story, not just the nice touchy-feely parts.

There is literally nothing that I ever asked to do, that I asked the blessed Creator to help me to do, that I have not been able to accomplish.

All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.

One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.