Religion

"Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better."

"The whole duty of humanity, from a Christian perspective is: "To know God and to show God.""

"Anybody that believes in separation of church and state needs to leave right now."

"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy."

"O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives."

"Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests..."

"...resident mockery give us an hour for magic."

"Every religion assumes that God loves men, since He establishes a religion for their happiness; and since He loves men we are certain of pleasing Him in loving them, too. Usbek’s prayer in Letter XLVI. Is not yet out of date. “Lord, I do not understand any of those discussions that are carried on without end regarding Thee: I would serve Thee according to Thy will; but each man whom I consult would have me serve Thee according to his.” He insists that religion is intended for man’s happiness; and that, in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to our beliefs – not necessary even to attempt to convert them."

"Atheism leads not to badness, but only to an incurable sadness and loneliness."

"...it may be that there is no God, that "the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms," that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain - that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. "A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true."

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan —- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

"The best way to insure the earth is never over populated is for sensible and righteous governments to clear all forms of atheism and heresy."

"We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them."

"I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God's world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers. These are the articles of my faith, and there is yet another on which all depends -— to bear this faith above every tempest which overfloods it, and to make it a principal in disaster and through affliction. Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit and of God pronouncing His works good."

"Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, 'the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest'."

"I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God."

"I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character. If by religion, we are understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." But if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be, as you again say, "something not fit to be named, even indeed, a hell.""

"I believe, with the Quaker preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they all differ."

"Among the most inestimable of our blessings, also, is that you so justly particularize, of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government, and yet proved by our experience to be its best support."

"I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten. On the contrary, it is because I have reflected on it, that I find much more time necessary for it than I can at present dispose of. I have a view of the subject which ought to displease neither the rational Christian nor Deists, and would reconcile many to a character they have too hastily rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened. The delusion into which the X. Y. Z. plot showed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion."

"Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life."

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

"Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me … That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."

"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."

"Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensations which tells you this is something you've always known."

"God created Arrakis to train the faithful."

"The irreligious are more religious than they themselves know, and the religious are less so than they think."

"My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith."

"Hinduism as I know it entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being … When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita, and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full of tragedies and if they have not left any visible and indelible effect on me, I owe it to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita."

"Freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth."

"Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion —- human religion -— but any number of faiths."

"You and I didn't design people. God designed people. What I am trying to do is to discover why God included humans in the Universe."

"We have now learned from our generalizations of the great complexity of the interactions of principles... that what is approached is eternal and instant awareness of absolute reality of all that ever existed. All the great metaphysical integrity of all the individuals, which is potential and inherent in the complex interactions of generalized principles, will always and only coexist eternally."

"Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble."

"Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them."

"In spite of our imbecility and terrors, and "universal decay of religion," &c. &c, the moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say, there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, there is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of his superlative effects."

"It is, therefore, quite natural that the churches have always fought against science and have persecuted its supporters. But, on the other hand, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds."

"I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing."

"A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or, he may be in Church and be aware of God; but, if he is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in all things and places, and is willing to give Himself everywhere so far as lies in Him. He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere."

"For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love."

"I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given."

"I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt."

"In my religion there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry and doubt."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

"The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always."

"Our times are in his hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!""

"There is surely a piece of divinity within us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun."