Quotes on Religion

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

Human society is a ceaseless growth, and unfoldment in terms of spirituality.

What people are really after is, what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God? And I would say, if I find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic.

Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

Religion is like a map. The route isn't important. It's the destination that matters.

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

We may fight terrorism through brute force, but the terror that is unleashed in the name of religion can only be challenged through moral courage.

Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.

When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons.

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

I place no hope in my strength, nor in my works: but all my confidence is in God my protector, who never abandons those who have put all their hope and thought in him.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.