Quotes on Religion

Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant, they live and let live.

The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.

Modern American politicians have the same cowardice about denying an equally bloodthirsty even sillier god, Jehovah._x000D_ _x000D_ None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist... I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

Are you never afraid of God's judgement in denying him? Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.

People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.

Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.

Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.

Human life without death would be something other than human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to out deepest longings and greatest accomplishments.

Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Hell is having to execute a pointless act from which nothing ever comes except the need to do it again.

I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.

And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.

The rights of men and women should be equal and sacred-marriage should be a perfect partnership.

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.

The museums of medieval Europe, from Holland to Tuscany, are crammed with instruments and devices upon which the holy men labored devoutly, in order to see how long they could keep someone alive while being roasted. It is not needful to go into further details, but there were also religious books of instruction in this art, and guides for the detection of heresy by pain.

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.

Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!