Ask a true scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will besilent. Ask a true religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied. - Kedar Joshi
Religious sentiments are many a times much above reality. All are aware of reality but blinded by faith and faith has always led to many a myths become reality". - Amit Abraham
If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
The turmoil and dislocations confronting present-day society will not be solved until both the scientific and religious genius of the human race are fully utilized. - Baha'i International Community
Our religious faith gives us the answer to the false beliefs of Communism... I have the feeling that God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose.
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
A non-religious person when awaken would make others sleep. Therefore his sleeping is good. A religious person when awaken will awaken others. Therefore his awakening is good. - Lord Mahavira
Racism and religious bigotry are two essential pieces of baggage mankind carries as it moves from one century to the next. - R. N. Prasher
God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'--that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world. - Timothy J. Keller
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music. - Igor Stravinsky
I am a religious man! The only thing is, that in my religion, I am the God! - Tunk
Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still slave in both these countries -- slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity. - Saadat Hasan Manto
I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That's how you make atheists. - David Silverman
Inner peace doesn't have to be religious, spiritual, or impossible. It simply means you think and act with clarity and compassion--no longer conquered by the storms of the mind. - Janice Anderson
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science. - Albert Einstein
Mormons invented themselves just as other religious and ethnic groups invented themselves. But Mormons did so in such a singularly impressive way that we will probably always remain baffled as to how exactly it happened. - Laurence Moore
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult. - Rita Rudner
You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic. - Doris Egan
...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say 'I believe in gravity," one should not proclaim 'I believe in evolution. - Michael Shermer
I've fought for religious freedom and I can tell you that anti-gay 'religious freedom' bills aren't it. - DaShanne Stokes
It’s perfectly understandable, in my opinion, to find good things in the teachings of Jesus Christ or any other figure, mythical or otherwise. But to base your life on the teachings of Jesus as they are portrayed in the Bible and claim that you are not religious is disingenuous. - David G. McAfee
Experience, derived from scientific investigation, led to all the scientific literature in history. Likewise, experience, derived from religious transcendence, led to all the religious scriptures in history. It's never the other way around. - Abhijit Naskar
In all those faces,I saw, your face.Amen, Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria HermansReligion of Blue Circle - Petra Hermans
I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist. - Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar
Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you chose for yourself, the other God chose for you. - Habeeb Akande
If you are religious, pray. If you are philosophical, contemplate. If you are spiritual, meditate. - John K. Brown
EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors. - Ambrose Bierce
People have sex, even the religious ones. Yet, when sex is transferred into words, suddenly it's dirty, vulgar, immoral, trashy. Funny huh? - Hector Himeros
Placing religious beliefs above law is a great recipe for destruction of entire human race. - Ketan Waghmare
Politics, like insurance, security, pharmaceutical and religious institutions all work the same. They sell the idea of a threat along with the antidote. Marketing 101. - Tarryn Tomlinson
No terms, no conditions, no promises, no commitment, and no institution—but only another example of what happens when law and politics attempt to regulate a religious institution. - H. Kirk Rainer
When each one of us become an active and living book of lessons for those who see our examples, the boundaries of religious interpretation will give way to the new era of brotherhood and peace we're waiting for. - Chico Xavier
We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others - Harry Truman
No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them - Elie Wiesel
Religious ceremonial nowadays provides less opportunity for bad language and sexual symbolism. - Aubrey de Sélincourt
Today religious nuts outnumber monkey nuts in the world. - Fakeer Ishavardas
[Tolstoy] does not necessarily get rid of [his angry] temperament by undergoing religious conversion, and indeed it is obvious that the illusion of having been reborn may allow one's native vices to flourish more freely than ever, though perhaps in subtler forms. - George Orwell
[W]hen one has a religious experience, what is 'true' is only that one has had that experience, not that its contents convey anything about reality. To determine that, one needs a way to verify the contents of a revelation, and that means science. - Jerry A. Coyne
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience. - Shelley Winters
To treat fiction as if it were a religious or moral sermon is about as far from the actuality of literature as it is possible to get and indeed it is, in my opinion, the purest form of intellectual barbarism. - Edward W. Said
Freedom of religion is not enough; we need the extinction of it, because no one has turned to be a religious by their own choice. - M.F. Moonzajer
We unfortunately identify people by their religion, but my question is that, how can you say that we got different religious when we all smile in a same language..! - Ridhdhesh Jivawala
One thing that needs to carry in your pocket, all the time, by going through all the different experiences of life, either on spiritual or religious path or with your daily life is that, unless you experience yourself as God, there are more steps to cover ahead, on the journey called life. - Roshan Sharma
What does religious freedom mean if we would use it as a cover for hate and privilege? - DaShanne Stokes
Some churches, sects, cults, or religious movements are basically collective egoic entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality. - Eckhart Tolle
Mastered To Be Mastered A Master : Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria HermansReligion of Blue CircleOctober 9, 2016Babaji - Petra Hermans
RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it. - Ambrose Bierce
I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic. - Woody Allen
Writing my own novels in the '90s...I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor. - Mary Doria Russell
Ask a deeply religious Christian if he’d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don’t seem so bad lately. - Scott Adams
Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable--the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars. - Rodney Stark
Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles. - James D. Watson
The practice of cultivating altruism has a beneficial effect not only from the religious point of view but also from the mundane point of view, not only for long term spiritual development but even in terms of immediate rewards. - Dalai Lama XIV
It is not in our forming battlements or bristling seacoasts, or our Army and Navy that makes America great - but rather our reliance in the law of liberty and the religious law God has planted in us. - Abraham Lincoln
TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating. - Ambrose Bierce
People talk about history and things like slavery, genocide, and religious persecution as horrors that happened in the past because we were ignorant. But nothing's changed. We still hate what we don't understand. - J. Matthew Nespoli
The world holds two classes of men--intelligent men without religion, and religious men withoutintelligence.poet - ~ Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri, 973-1057, Syrian
The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know it is human business, it is a question of human survival. - Dalai Lama XIV
What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement. - Søren Kierkegaard
Prayer is a conversation between two people who love each other -you and the Lord-and you don't have to use fancy or religious words to dialogue with him. - Cheri Fuller
I am a religious person, although I am not a believer. - Philip Pullman
Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you choose for yourself, the other God chose for you. - Habeeb Akande
I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.' That's just a long-winded religious way to say, 'Shut up.' - Penn Jillette
Education levels are highly and negatively correlated to religious belief. In other words, ignorance is bliss. - Cesar Nascimento
In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here.Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters. - Mark Twain
Very few spiritual or religious masters know that the student is sometimes a teacher because they haven't acquired such level. - Daniel Marques
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. - Friedrich Nietzsche
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. - Albert Einstein
Fear of dying must surely mean fear of how one dies. If one can be assured of a painless death, how can one fear it, unless one is a religious fanatic with a very guilty conscience? - Dimitris Mita
Ask a deeply religious Christian if he'd rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately. - Scott Adams
The more you keep your religious beliefs concealed from others, the lesser religious conflicts occur in the society. - Abhijit Naskar
Nothing shocks me more in the men of religion and their flocks than their pretensions to be the only religious people.
The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin. - Jay Leno
My question to the atheist is, do you want an atheist world or a peaceful world? And to the believer, do you want a religious world or a peaceful world? Religious orientation doesn't define peace, but the answer here may define one's true nature. - Abhijit Naskar
The religious scholars I have consulted are passionate about the need for political leaders to educate themselves in the varieties of faith and to see religion more as a potential means for reconciliation than as a source of conflict. - Madeleine Albright
Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal. - Lenore Hershey
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces. - Mark Twain
Scientific understanding of nature, doesn't make a person religious or atheist. It makes a person liberated of all labels. Moreover it makes a person kind and understanding. - Abhijit Naskar
They hate us because we are atheists and we feel sorry for them because they are religious. - M.F. Moonzajer
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
My religious beliefs teach me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time of my death. I do not concern myself with that, but to be always ready whenever it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and all men would be equally brave. - Stonewall Jackson
There is nothing spiritual about a marriage that uses guilt, blame, shame or religious manipulations to keep a relationship together. - Shannon L. Alder
If one religion were 'true,' we would expect to see, even if only once in all of recorded history, a religious missionary that had stumbled upon a culture that shared the same revelations — brought forth by the same deity. - David G. McAfee
A history has not been made by you.History made you.The Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria HermansThe Religion Of The Blue CircleAmen - Petra Hermans
A religious person without no job is a dead person. (Iigbagbo ti koni ise oku ni. - Yoruba proverb) - Habeeb Akande
I am a religious by the heart, but an atheist by the mind. - M.F. Moonzajer
I show how much of the wars of religion involved Catholics killing Catholics, Lutherans killing Lutherans, and Catholic-Protestant collaboration. (Page 10 The Myth of Religious Violence) - William Cavanaugh
Same-sex marriage has not created problems for religious institutions; religious institutions have created problems for same-sex marriage. - DaShanne Stokes
An imaginative person can be spiritual but can't be religious. - Debasish Mridha
Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life. - David J. Chalmers
Regardless of the religious tradition, spiritual path, or personal perspective we choose to embrace, the potential exists for it to encourage and uplift every aspect of our being and to affect the types of goals we may choose to set for ourselves. - Laurie Buchanan, PhD
EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort. - Ambrose Bierce
I know many people who believe in God, and I expected to find Him on my way to the South Pole if he exists. My religious experiences were very different however, [only] involving myself, nature and the universe. - Liv Arnesen
I don't assign myself to the names of any religious or non religious groups I prefer my actions and beliefs to be manic or marvelous just like me - Stanley Victor Paskavich
If the humanity does not poison the minds of the children with all sort of religious craps, the new generations of humanity will soon create a new world order where reason and logic will be the sole guide, the sole savior! - Mehmet Murat ildan
It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are - not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within - that you can begin to take control. - Oprah Winfrey
Religious unity does not come so easily. It is not a piece of pie, which you can buy in the shop. It takes sincere efforts from every single human being on this planet. - Abhijit Naskar
FRACTURED FACTIONSMany cults are created by the uncontrollable egos of religious zealots - Kamil Ali
Religious faith as a whole induces various health benefits in the general population through complex biological processes. - Abhijit Naskar
When a disciple from the wildcat religious asylum comes marching forth, get under the bed. It doesn't matter whether he's a Christian, Hindu, Jew or Muslim. - Mark Twain
You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility. - Carl Sagan
Religious nuts, atheists, theists, as too most scientists fail to "get" IT - the Ultimate Reality - because they seek it through ego. - Fakeer Ishavardas
Religious devotion is for the individual. Character is for all. There is no loss if there is no devotion. Everything is lost if there is no character. - Periyar E.V. Ramasamy
I'm the world's least happy atheist. I miss having religious faith, but trying to have it seems like trying to be in love with someone that you're not in love with. - Lisa Williams
If we subject religious claims to a lesser degree of scrutiny, we should not be surprised if religious people subject us to a greater degree of servitude. - Stifyn Emrys
It is only in pain that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to pain is infinite; one can use and abuse it without any fear that she will die, as long as some childish physical cowardice or some religious hope keeps her from the suicide that offers her a way out. - Colette
Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking. - Robert Anton Wilson
Two things form the bedrock of any open society — freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country."[Don’t allow religious hooligans to dictate terms (The Times of India, January 16, 2008)] - Salman Rushdie
Societies where there are worthy men and women of God, not necessarily preachers or religious men, but men that know the ways of God, they stand up against the collapse of equity in their land - Sunday Adelaja
Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions. - Albert Camus
He had never been a religious person. Even as a child he had found the notion of an omnipotent creator who punished his crations inconsistently for minor infractions of a vaguely defined moral code to be unthinkable to anyone with an ounce of sense. - Michael Thomas Ford
I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others. - Jawaharlal Nehru
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. - Albert Einstein
The purest definition of religious is: relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality. - Darrell Calkins
If a religious book makes you harbor ill thoughts about those with differing faith, then, you're reading the wrong crap of late. - Fakeer Ishavardas
The kindest and most compassionate people I have come across are not religious. - OMOSOHWOFA CASEY
Quite surprisingly the majority of religious and spiritual practices actually diminishes your brain’s ability to act out of rage and fear. - Abhijit Naskar
Religion has always been an irrelevant aspect if my life. The people here are either pissed of atheists, or religious freaks waiting for God to save them. - Alina Baker
World is full of lost lives, full of unfortunate souls ruined in the name of unreasonable religious rules! - Mehmet Murat ildan
While these Christians (the majority in a recent poll) are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture, - David Kinnaman
That’s the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our community Chuck Palahniuk - Chuck Palahniuk in interview with TMO
Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite. - Abhijit Naskar
Do you prefer to be with people who glow with love and compassion or those who burn with anger fueled by religious doctrine or political ideology? - Jeff Rasley
I wonder either their God has turned old, sick or died, because even the religious people no more believe in shit. - M.F. Moonzajer
Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your competitors will. - Michio Kaku
Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. - Bahá'u'lláh
Every religion which does not concern itself with Science is mere tradition, and that is not the essential. Therefore science, education and civilization are most important necessities for the full religious life.
I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief.(Conversations pg 96) - J.G. Ballard
A person has to ignore the larger social, economic, political, and religious climate of early North American colonialism to advance the Christian nation myth. - David D. Flowers
It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the Internet has evolved into a force strong enough to reflect the greatest hopes and fears of those who use it. After all, it was designed to withstand nuclear war, not just the puny huffs and puffs of politicians and religious fanatics. - Denise Caruso
EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled. - Ambrose Bierce
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is... the source of all religious fanaticism. - Reinhold Niebuhr
When children are given spiritual guidance, they grow-up learning to know how to pray and praise God. Even though they might not be a religious person in their later years, those values they were taught are the things they remember in their times of need. - Ellen J. Barrier
The purpose of all the major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts. - Dalai Lama XIV
Some people wouldn’t still be sane, if they were not religious or superstitious; some wouldn’t be disabled or dead. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief. - Sigmund Freud
My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.
You can’t argue with religious people; you can’t change their mind even if you prove them wrong. - M.F. Moonzajer
In this nonfundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle. It is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid. - Andrew Sullivan
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society. - Criss Jami
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal
Whereas cognitive constraints on negative emotions can reduce distress, freeing positive emotions from such constraints can enhance religious experience. - Gerald L. Clore
I agree with Abhijit Naskar that the path of tolerance is the only way—but it must be accompanied by continued pressure to break down barriers to access to information, so that our tolerance isn’t exploited to further the ends of totalitarian religious groups. - Daniel C. Dennett
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority--literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
[When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996:]If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses. - Carl Sagan
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it. - G.K. Chesterton
INDIGESTION, n. A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the western wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: "Plenty well, no pray; big bellyache, heap God." - Ambrose Bierce
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. - Karl Marx
When I look at the Church today, not just in Africa but worldwide, it seems to me that we have come to love darkness even if we are called Church or some other religious names. - Sunday Adelaja
There are many kinds of truth: societal truths, religious truths, fundamental truths, scientific truths, and universal truths. Your truth should be what you can trust with your heart. - Debasish Mridha M.D.
I always try to share with others the idea that in order to become compassionate it is not necessary to become religious. - Dalai Lama XIV
You do not have to be religious to be spiritual and moral. - Toni Sorenson
Spirituality is conversation with God, everything else is just religious custom. - Stefan Emunds
I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
You can be RELIGIOUS without being SPIRITUAL or You can be SPIRITUAL without being RELIGIOUS or Both It all depends on your Philosophy. - Constance Chuks Friday
A religious woman is a slave that advocates the slavery. - M.F. Moonzajer
It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups. - Henry A. Wallace
Just like the way you date in relationship and become convinced before you give a partner your heart, you got to date your PASTOR to know he can be your MENTOR before you give him your ears! Test the Spirits...and don't be a religious fanatic! - Israelmore Ayivor
I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day. In fact, don't get me going. I'm almost as bad as Richard Dawkins on this issue. - Richard E. Leakey
If you've got a religious belief that withers in the face of observations of the natural world, you ought to rethink your beliefs - rethinking the world isn't an option. - P.Z. Myers
This generation - it's almost a religious thing now. The millennium, the end days, no need to be responsible anymore to the future. A burden has been lifted from them. The Baby Jesus is managing the portfolio of earthly affairs, and nobody begrudges Him the carried interest... - Thomas Pynchon
I think it's not particularly necessary to lead a religious life. People progress just as well in music, or art, or math or science or gardening or whatever. It all seems to work as well and the process is good. - Jim Henson
I have wandered freely in mystical traditions that are not religious and have been profoundly influenced by them. It is my church, however, that I keep returning, for she is my spiritual home. - Anthony de Mello S.J.
People say it is impossible to get out of stupidity; well, I was born religious and here I am an atheist. - M.F. Moonzajer
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window. - Stephen King
Religious people claim that it's just the fundamentalists of each religion that cause problems. But there's got to be something wrong with the religion itself if those who strictly adhere to its most fundamental principles are violent bigots and sexists. - David G. McAfee
There are so many voices heard today asserting that one should "have religion" or "believe," but all they mean is that one should associate himself, "sign up" with some religious group. Stand up and be counted. As if religion were somehow primarily a matter of gregariousness... - Thomas Merton
We are fools, not by our religious beliefs,however by what we are lead to believe by those who control what information we receive - Kloby
Many of us have allowed well-meaning parents,teachers, religious leaders and peers to tell us that there issomething fundamentally wrong with us if we don’t believe as they do. Simply put, we have forgotten how to think for ourselves. - Derric Yuh Ndim
Hurry, your imaginary heaven is calling you up, my dear holier-than-thou religious nuts. - Fakeer Ishavardas
Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character. - Uri Avnery
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience. - Shelley Winters
The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. - Salman Rushdie
In any modern society encouraging your child to cut himself is an unthinkable act, but only with religious belief becomes part of the culture, and demands respect. - Sean S. Kamali
One of the main reasons and excuses behind every religious failure is a FALSE PROMISE. - M.F. Moonzajer
The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin. - George Jellinek
The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life. - Jimmy Carter
Love is always the first casualty of a religious war, the second is Truth and the third...Humanity. - Jason Versey
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship. - Evelyn Underhill
We have managed to transfer religious belief into gullibility for whatever can masquerade as science. - Nicholas Nassim Taleb
A pastor without anointing is just a religious professor - Steven Chuks Nwaokeke
God does not bless religious efforts—He blesses heart-felt obedience. - Jim George
The dangerous enemies of your species are fundamentalism, intolerance, separatism, extremism, hostility and prejudicial fear, be it religious, atheistic or political. - Abhijit Naskar
All religions, in their pure form, will tell you God is Love. And power, fear, division, judgment, oppression, hatred and self-righteousness are the opposite of Love. So going to war, for example, in the name of religion, is a complete contradiction. No pure religious leader would ever support this. - The Truth
When religious people take the stance that they don’t owe anyone that is hurting closure or answers then God is not winning. Conflict continues because of lack of communication, fear and indifference. - Shannon L. Alder
Religious guilt will never grow the kind of love you want in someone. - Shannon L. Alder
Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people. - Doris Egan
Religion is a natural phenomenon of the human mind, but today, in the hands of theoretical bloodsucking religious preachers it has become a lifeless mockery. Now is the time that you take back religion from those intellectual idiots and place it where it belongs, in the temple of your inner cosmos. - Abhijit Naskar
I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. [The World Is My Home (1991)] - James A. Michener
Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival. - Dalai Lama XIV
Decisions of character come from understanding that they are accountable to God only, not to family, spouses, religious leaders, corporations, public opinion or your own ego. - Shannon L. Alder
Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on 'revealed truths') literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it. - Jeffrey Tayler
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. - Eric Hoffer
Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history. - Huston Smith
Your religious beliefs are your business. They are not and should not be the basis for law. If you use them as justification to discriminate against others, don’t be upset when others decide you’re an asshole."[] Jim C. Hines - Blog post of July 26, 2011
God is in need of godly servants to send to the religious world to bring back his kingdom there - Sunday Adelaja
down with hell and heaven and all the religious fussinfinity pleased our parents one inch looks good to us - E.E. Cummings
Lila backed away toward the curtain. "Do you just... stand here until I need you?"The woman smiled and dug a volume from a pocket. "I have a book.""Let me guess, a religious text?""Actually," said Ister, perching on the low couch, "it's about pirates."Lila smiled. - V.E. Schwab
The respect + love for humanity that's why I travel.We are all special and gifted beings, no matter our religious differences. The message should be peace,love and prosperity. There should be no adversity but solidarity. - Henry Johnson Jr
In one celebrated incident, 300 members of Church of the New Song requested $6000 worth of filet mignon and Harvey's Bristol Cream for a crucial religious ceremony at the federal prison in Atlanta.
It's been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn't made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain? - Abhijit Naskar
I call him religious who understands the suffering of others. - Mahatma Gandhi
Religious people never believe I write books. Someone should tell them books aren't only produced in monasteries anymore. - Daniel Marques
ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke. - Ambrose Bierce
... Science... denude(s) all religious beliefs... denigrating them as irrational forms of superstition or myth regardless of their intrinsic rationality or value. - Nicolas Gane
As Wade Clark Roof noted in his study, "the 'weightlessness' of contemporary belief in God is a reality...for religious liberals and many evangelicals. - Mark Galli
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters. - Isaac Bashevis Singer
America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land.
Tattooing, when understood in its entirety, must be seen as a religious act. The human being brings forth images from the center of the self and communicates them to the world. Fantasy is embodied in reality and the person is made whole. - Spider Webb
The book-learned preacher who carries the badge of authority, is by no means religious. - Abhijit Naskar
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism. - Reinhold Niebuhr
True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete. - Malcolm X
If the churches, mosques and other religious centres could come together to embrace a nation’s value system, and then set out to disciple the nation in these values and virtues, then the greatness of such a nation is inevitable. - Sunday Adelaja
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window. - Stephen King
The disease of intolerance is not communicated only in religious groups. I’ve seen it infect racial groups, economic groups and even whole nations (where it is often cleverly disguised as patriotism). Intolerance always fences people out. It creates one group we call US. And the rest we call THEM. - Steve Goodier
Often religious education teaches us to conform and creates a psychological prison which is difficult to escape. - Debasish Mridha
An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness. - Loren Eiseley
If there is a religious agency in our lives, it has to appear in the manner of our times. Not from on high, but a revelation that hides itself in our culture, it will be ground-level, on the street, it'll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, hard to tell apart from anything else. - E. L. Doctorow, The City of God
The three most important parts a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money and his religious beliefs. - Samuel Butler
Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it. - John Dewey
Don't judge people by their religious, cultural, or professional background. Judge if you must, by their behavior with other people. - Abhijit Naskar
A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other... until death do them join. - Elbert Hubbard
Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance.
One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. - Steven Weinberg
That new technologies and techniques would be forthcoming was a fundamental article of Christian faith. Hence, no bishops or theologians denounced clocks or sailing ships--although both were condemned on religious grounds in various non-Western societies. - Rodney Stark
Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity. - H.P. Lovecraft
Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry. - Thomas Jefferson
A non-religious prison when awaken would make others sleep. Therefore his sleeping is good. A religious person when awaken will awaken others. Therefore his awakening is good. - Lord Mahavira
You cannot expect any rational thought from a religious man. He is like a rocking log in water. - Periyar E.V. Ramasamy
It may be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever… - William James
I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time. - Malcolm X
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious idea of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. - Thomas A. Edison
Religious politics is the bent of those who push "The Myth of the Christian Nation" or "Muslim Supremicism" everywhere! ~ © gfp '42™ - Gary Patton
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. - Abraham Joshua Heschel