Religion

"All religions make me wanna throw up. All religions make me sick. All religions make me wanna throw up. All religions suck. They all claim that they have the truth That'll set you free. Just give 'em all your money and they'll set you free. Free for a fee. They all claim that they have the Answer When they don't even know the Question. They're just a bunch of liars. They just want your money. They just want your consciousness. All religions suck. All religions make me wanna throw up."

"I realized that ritual will always mean throwing away something; Destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods."

"It were endless to enumerate all the passages both in the sacred and profane writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the divinity. Hence the common maxim, primos in orbe deos fecit timor [fear brought the first gods into the world]. This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally nothing else but fear to support them."

"There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion."

"Religion… is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart."

"Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity."

"You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of an eye for an eye, a life for a life, which is known throughout the universe for its… stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision; but nobody's paid much attention to them, not even the Buddhists or the Christians."

"Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so Who art not missed by any that entreat."

"All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strewen In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own."

"So 'ere the storm of war broke out, Religion spawn'd a various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts, That first run all religion down, And after every swarm its own."

"On the whole we must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration."

"The church has been so harsh with heretics only because she deemed that there is no worse enemy than a child who has gone astray. But the record of Gnostic effronteries and the persistence of Manichean currents have contributed more to the construction of orthodox dogma than all the prayers."

"The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you."

"It was religion which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights which opened men's eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought."

"No mere man since the Fall, is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments."

"What we have here is a war--the war of matter and spirit... The war of banks and religion. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion."

"Yet where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge."

"Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion."

"The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections."

"G__ knows I'm no the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be, Just for a screen."

"It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live were only to graze.… Without this, the beauties of the world are but splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of existence profitless and unadulterated miseries."

"Synods are mystical Bear-gardens, Where Elders, Deputies, Church-wardens, And other Members of the Court, Manage the Babylonish sport."

"Religion is poetry misunderstood."

"His religion at best is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a great Perhaps"."

"It seems to me a great truth … that human things can not stand on selfishness, mechanical utilities, economics, and law-courts; that if there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable, and doomed to ruin."

"The world is full, also, of great traditional books tracing the history of man (but focused narrowly on the local group) from the age of mythological beginnings, through periods of increasing plausibility, to a time almost within memory, when the chronicles begin to carry the record, with a show of rational factuality, to the present. Furthermore, just as all primitive mythologies serve to validate the customs, systems of sentiments, and political aims of their respective local groups, so do these great traditional books. On the surface they may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been conceived as myths: poetic readings of the mysteries of life from a certain interested point of view. But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is — to say the least — to miss the point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt."

"If you are seeking the comforts of religion rather than the glory of our Lord, you are on the wrong track. The Comforter meets us unsought in the path of duty. There is something in religion, when rightly comprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are "the constant hectic of a fool.""

"O Heavenly Father! convert my religion from a name to a principle. Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee."

"Religion is faith in an Infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that Rectitude which conscience commands us to seek, This conviction gives a Divine Sanction to duty."

"The true office of religion is to bring out the whole nature of man in harmonious activity…"

"The God of the Unitarians is a bachelor; the Deity of the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and the other orthodox Protestant sects a spouseless Father with one Son, who is identical with Himself. In the attempt to outvie each other in the erection of their sixty-two thousand and odd churches, prayer-houses, and meeting-halls, in which to teach these conflicting theological doctrines, $354,485,581 have been spent. The value of the Protestant parsonages alone, in which are sheltered the disputants and their families, is roughly calculated to approximate $54,115,297... One Presbyterian church in New York cost a round million; a Catholic altar alone, one-fourth as much!... And now, with Pilate, let us inquire, What is truth? Where is it to be searched for amid this multitude of warring sects? Each claims to be based upon divine revelation, and each to have the keys of the celestial gates. Is either in possession of this rare truth?... These figures are copied from the "Religious Statistics of the United States for the year 1871."

"Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'âme des dévots?"

"At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love."

"It doesn’t matter how often I hear: religion, religion, religion, I know deep in my heart that it is not about religion. It is about the battle of matter and spirit—the battle of the oppressed that are dispossessed— and want to possess—because they feel possessed. And they are possessed of spirit. It is the call of the oppressed to be possessed by something higher than material dispossession. After all the schisms of isms—after Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Communism, Feminism —after separation of church and state—it is an anachronism to call it a religious crusade when it is a global conflict between the ones who have too much and the ones who have too little, too little to lose."

"Religion as a whole is but a form of loyalty to the interests of English property."

"Maia recognized a look of true religion in the other woman’s eyes. A version and interpretation that conveniently justified what had already been decided."

"Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thine infinity; So surely anchored on The steadfast Rock of immortality."

"Curva trahit mites, pars pungit acuta rebelles."

"But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance, it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion."

"The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own."

"People differ in their discourse and profession about these matters, but men of sense are really but of one religion. — "What religion?" — the Earl said, "Men of sense never tell it.""

"An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended!"

"One religion is as true as another."

"I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace. And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives aren’t religious people."

"What but the mighty mastership of religion has ever led a people up through civil wars and revolutions into a regenerated order and liberty? What has planted colonies for a great history but religion? The most august and beautiful structures of the world have been temples of religion; crystallizations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents more or less directly the fruitfulness and creativeness of religious talents."

"As if Religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended."

"Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances — these are necessary to religion — no man can be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is, mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life."

"Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. "The world passes away!" The things seen are temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties — the whole "unprofitable stir and fever of the world" — will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things; it finds in them the seeds of immortality."

"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time... But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."