Quotes on Religion

As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones.

Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.

As Juan Gabriel, music is my religion, and mariachi is my devotion. And my songs are my prayers.

Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd.

We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.

I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.

For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions, and the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them.

It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury... Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree-a matter profoundly important to him.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.

Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

Bad Gardens copy, good gardens create, great gardens transcend. What all great gardens have in common are their ability to pull the sensitive viewer out of him or herself and into the garden, so completely that the separate self-sense disappears entirely, and at least for a brief moment one is ushered into a nondual and timeless awareness. A great garden, in other words, is mystical no matter what its actual content.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." _x000D_ "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." _x000D_ "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions....there was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

It doesn't matter how many drugs I take, I'm not fulfilled. This isn't satisfying. There's a spiritual hunger going on. Everybody feels it. If you don't feel it now, you will. Trust me. You will... Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's the real rebellion.