Religion

"I cannot really endorse Planck's philosophy, even if it is logically valid and even though I respect the human attitudes to which it gives rise. Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow involved in the immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point."

"È religione anche non credere in niente."

"No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown."

"Psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith."

"It was a friar of orders grey Walked forth to tell his beads."

"The psychology of the religious experience has been well-researched and taped. There are many paths up the mountain—sensory deprivation or sensory overload—emotional response to stimuli or the lack thereof is common. Drugs, of course, from psychoactives to the more mundane depressants. Electropophy can bring it about, as can organic brain damage, lack or excess of oxygen, even sex can trigger it. And what it is, according to the science of man and mue, is a subjective mental state, somewhere to the left of hypnosis. A trick the mind plays on itself. A delusion, void of reality."

"Religion, which true policy befriends, Design'd by God to serve man's noblest ends, Is by that old deceiver's subtle play Made the chief party in its own decay, And meets the eagle's destiny, whose breast Felt the same shaft which his own feathers drest."

"The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted."

"All religious expression is symbolism; since we can describe only what we see, and the true objects of religion are The Seen. The earliest instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other religious forms differed and still differ according to external circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as it is applied to mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All words have, primarily, a material sense, howsoever they may afterward get, for the ignorant, a spiritual non-sense. To "retract," for example, is to draw back, and when applied to a statement, is symbolic, as much so as a picture of an arm drawn back, to express the same thing, would he. The very word "spirit" means " breath," from the Latin verb spiro, breathe."

"It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge."

"People [who belong in this environment] look for a path in the heavens for the simple reason that they have lost their way on earth."

"We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy."

"Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking."

"So upright Quakers please both man and God."

"To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines, Where slumber abbots purple as their wines."

"Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires."

"For virtue's self may too much zeal be had; The worst of madmen is a saint run mad."

"I think while zealots fast and frown, And fight for two or seven, That there are fifty roads to town, And rather more to Heaven."

"Suddenly he was angry. “And that’s what you think religion is, is it?” he said, trying to keep his temper. “I gen’rally don’t think about it at all,” said the voice behind him."

"“Now if I’d seen him, really there, really alive, it’d be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ‘em like a father and cared for ‘em like a mother...well, you wouldn’t catch me sayin’ things like ‘there are two sides to every question’ and ‘we must respect other people’s beliefs.’ You wouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’d all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’, Mister Oats, ‘cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just...is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.”"

"The Auditors had tried to understand religion, because so much that made no sense whatsoever was done in its name. But it could also excuse practically any kind of eccentricity. Genocide, for example."

"Religion is an original activity inherent in the anthropological form of human nature, and therefore has, at least in part, a meta-historical nature, even if its concrete forms of individual manifestation (meaning of individual existence) and collective manifestation (collective rites of identification and self-assurance) are always historical. Since religion is an original activity inherent in the anthropological (and even ethological) form of human nature, to predict its possible extinction and even to hope for it in the name of a sort of “universal scientific atheism” is a mistake, and indeed more than a mistake, a dead end in philosophy and politics."

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

"Let a man be firmly principled in his religion, he may travel from the tropics to the poles, it will never catch cold on the journey."

"He that hath no cross deserves no crown."

"They say: "If it had been the will of The Most Gracious, we should not have worshiped such (deities)!" Of that they have no knowledge! they do nothing but lie! Indeed, have We given them a Scripture before this, to which they are holding fast? Nay! they say: "We found our fathers following a certain religion, and we do guide ourselves by their footsteps." Just in the same way, whenever We sent a Warner before thee to any people, the wealthy ones among them said: "We found our fathers following a certain religion, and we will certainly follow in their footsteps." He said: "Even if I brought you better guidance than that which ye found your fathers following?" They said: "For us, we deny that ye are sent!" So We exacted retribution from them: now see what was the end of those who rejected!"

"Western psychologists accuse religion of repressing the vital energy of man and rendering his life quite miserable as a result of the sense of guilt which especially obsesses the religious people and makes them imagine that all their actions are sinful and can only be expiated through abstention from enjoying the pleasures of life. Those psychologists add that Europe lived in the darkness of ignorance as long as it adhered to its religion but once it freed itself from the fetters of religion, its emotions were liberated and accordingly it achieved wonders in the field of production."

"Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action."

"As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall."

"I’m not a practitioner of any religion, and I like it that way."

"If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron."

"I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy. It was communion time, where you eat this wafer and are supposed to be eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. My first impression was, "This is a bunch of cannibals they've put me down among!" For some time, I puzzled over this and puzzled over why they were saying these things, because the connection between what they were saying and reality was very tenuous. How the hell did Jesus become something to be eaten?"

"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will — and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."

"Let us also bear in mind that all the ancient religions, without exception, were divided into esoteric and exoteric. Indeed, much has become complicated in our Christian religion due to the fact that the clergy lost, or rather rejected, the key to the understanding of Christ's Teaching. This Teaching is full of esotericism, as is continuously confirmed by the words of Christ Himself."

"One may be quite sure that the conventional religious instruction, without the knowledge of the One Source, without the comparative history of the religions of all nations, gives only a false concept of the spiritual evolution of humanity and develops a sense of religious intolerance. Intolerance is a terrible scourge of the human race, and it contradicts all the Covenants of the Founders of the existing religions."

"Wrong are the assertions found in books that all religions and teachings discuss the low level of woman. Such discussions as do appear are the distortions and additions made in later times by those holding power through avarice and ignorance. Verily, the Great Founders of religions and teachings are not to be blamed for this crying ignorance. Let us consider how many dishonest and avaricious hands have handled these teachings during thousands of years!"

"In the presence of infinite might and infinite wisdom, the strength of the strongest man is but weakness, and the keenest of mortal eyes see but dimly."

"The demand for a statement of a candidate’s religious belief can have no meaning except that there may be discrimination for or against him because of that belief. Discrimination against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a reversion to the dreadful conditions of religious dissension which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion, and to all advance in civilization."

"Locke would have us begin with the study of spirits and go on to that of bodies. This is the method of superstition, prejudice, and error; it is not the method of nature, nor even that of well-ordered reason; it is to learn to see by shutting our eyes. We must have studied bodies long enough before we can form any true idea of spirits, or even suspect that there are such beings. The contrary practice merely puts materialism on a firmer footing. I am aware that many of my readers will be surprised to find me tracing the course of my scholar through his early years without speaking to him of religion. At fifteen he will not even know that he has a soul, at eighteen even he may not be ready to learn about it. For if he learns about it too soon, there is the risk of his never really knowing anything about it."

"Ils ont les textes pour eux; disait-il, j'en suis faché pour les textes."

"The ultimate source of our civilization's disease is the spiritual and religious crisis which has overtaken all of us and which each must master for himself. Above all, man is Homo religiosus, and yet we have, for the past century, made the desperate attempt to get along without God, and in the place of God we have set up the cult of man, his profane or even ungodly science and art, his technical achievements, and his State. We may be certain that some day the whole world will come to see, in a blinding flash, what is now clear to only a few, namely, that this desperate attempt has created a situation in which man can have no spiritual and moral life, and this means that he cannot live at all for any length of time, in spite of television and speedways and holiday trips and comfortable apartments. We seem to have proved the existence of God in yet another way: by the practical consequences of His assumed non-existence."

"Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;]], but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day."

"I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. 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."

"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others."

"In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."

"I’m naturally suspicious of people who wear religion heavily on their sleeves."

"The whole point in having a religion and faith is that you campaign for what you believe, not just for what you think is achievable."

"I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar. I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life."

"Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion."

"Faith: The opposite of dogmatism."