It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.

All things merge in one another – good into evil, generosity into justice, religion into politics..

Ignorance of Scripture is the root of every error in religion, and the source of ever heresy. To be allowed to remove a few grains of ignorance, and to throw a few rays of light on God’s precious word, is, in my opinion, the greatest honor that can be put on a Christian.

Growth in grace is one way to be happy in our religion. God has wisely linked together our comfort and our increase in holiness.

Next to praying there is nothing so important in practical religion as Bible-reading.

There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster, it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. It is not the authentic reality that called itself Christianity in the beginning.

Follow Christ for His own sake, if you follow Him at all. Be thorough, be real, be honest, be sound, be whole-hearted. If you have any religion at all, let your religion be real. See that you do not sin the sin of Lot’s wife.

Most true is it that what costs little is worth little! A religion which costs us nothing, and consist in nothing but hearing sermons, will always prove at last to be a useless thing.

To say that reunion with Rome would be an insult to our martyred Reformers is a very light thing; it is far more than this: it would be sin and an offense against God!

The man who has nothing more than a kind of Sunday religion — whose Christianity is like his Sunday clothes put on once a week, and then laid aside — such a man cannot, of course, be expected to care about growth in grace.

Affection is the real secret of a good memory in religion. No worldly man can think much about Christ, unless Christ is pressed upon his notice, because he has no affection for Him. The true Christian has thoughts about Christ every day that he lives, for this one simple reason, that he loves Him.

It is no answer to tell me that you disapprove of a religion of feelings. If you mean by that that you dislike a religion consisting of nothing but feelings, I agree with you entirely. But if you mean to shut out feelings altogether, you can know little of Christianity. The Bible teaches us plainly that a man may have good feelings without any true religion. But it teaches us no less plainly that there can be no true religion without some feeling towards Christ.

I declare I know no state of soul more dangerous than to imagine we are born again and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, because we have picked up a few religious feelings.

A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing. A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.

California, that advance post of our civilization, with its huge aircraft factories, TV and film studios, automobile way of life… its flavourless cosmopolitanism, its charlatan philosophies and religions, its lack of anything old and well-tried rooted in tradition and character.

The power of religion and godliness lives, thrives, or dies, as closet prayer lives, thrives, or dies. Godliness never rises to a higher pitch than when men keep closest to their closets, etc

A dominant religion is never ascetic

Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architectural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

The dimension of depth in the consciousness of religion creates the tension between what is and what ought to be. It bends the bow from which every arrow of moral action flies.

The settled opinion here is that religion is essentially distinct from Civil Govt. and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both….

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion…[has] divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree.

There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise…. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.

Every new & successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]

One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don’t know about the ultimate judgment. It’s beyond your judgment. And if you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.

Where’s the church, who took the steeple, Religion’s in the hands of some crazy ass people, Television preachers with bad hair and dimples, The God’s honest truth is, it’s not that simple.

It is meritorious to insist on forms; religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one

I was little there were times I wanted my parents to be normal. I wanted them to have a religion. I wanted them to have a job, like the parents of every other kid I went to school with.

Freedom of religion does not entitle your religion to have a privileged position within the public sphere.

No other religion has come even remotely close to Islam in inspiring, justifying, or supporting terrorism. And yet, the progressive intelligentsia insist that none of these documented attacks have anything to do with Islam.

There is no “black mind” or “white mind”, no “white male of knowing”, there is only one truth, and we find it through the scientific method.

In a free society, people should have the right to criticize a religion; they should have the right to do so, and of course their criticisms are themselves open to criticism; that is the essence of freedom of speech and thought.

You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t decide right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion.
Kane

Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners … I believe in Gandhi’s philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.

Boy, you’re good at figuring things out. Isn’t he? Except that if anybody’s the devil in this room it’s _you_, buster.” An extraordinary bitterness came into his face. “I’ve seen you before. I know you, all right, preacher man. Age after age, you come back. You always lead the crusades. You’re so damned golden-tongued, other people just flock to die for your causes. You die with them, it’s true, because you’re stupid enough to believe your own great lies; but you always come back again somehow. Oh, I know _you_.

I think the Indian model of respecting the uniqueness of each religion and, of every state is what makes the country great.

Music has always been my religion.

I can tell you 100 percent Pastor Jones will not burn the Quran tomorrow. There will be no Quran burning.

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense

Of all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.

Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good

I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge.

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.

Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don’t make the mistake of thinking that the… cosmos… gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

Religion is still useful among the herd – that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is in-eradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be.
Take away his Christian god and saints, and he will worship something else.

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.

I am disillusioned enough to know that no man’s opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he’s talking about.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

Religion itself is an absurdity and an anomaly, and paganism is acceptable only because it represents that purely orgiastic phase of religion farthest from reality.

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother’s milk.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?

All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.

Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end.

The religion of the atheist has a God-shaped blank at it’s heart.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men’ – democracy must cling to that message. For it is my deep conviction that democracy cannot live without that true religion which gives a nation a sense of justice and moral purpose.

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods

Theater is my sanctuary, my religion, and the place I go to find my true self.

Deep in the marrow of our religion is the conviction that loss and sacrifice are noble. To surrender something is the highest proof of Christian duty.

There are many whose religion consists in theory. Their lives are not uplifted and ennobled by practicing the truth they profess. Faithful Christian men and women should have a distinguished appearance.

The religion of Christ means more than the forgiveness of sin; it means taking away our sins, and filling the vacuum with the graces of the Holy Spirit.

Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them

Theology, by diverting the attention of men from this life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion, constantly preaching that this world is full of misery, but the next world would be beautiful – or not, as the case may be – has forced on men the thought of fear where otherwise there might have been the happy abandon of nature.

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

I do not believe that God ever created a man and then got so “put out” over the job that He damned him.

Religion, to have any force upon men’s understandings,–indeed, to exist at all,–must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any human institution, else it would be the absurdist thing in the world,–an acknowledged cheat.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease.

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

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Religion gives inspiration to act well. Not only that, it gives inspiration to the arts and to many other activities of human beings.

There’s no religion that could save me No matter how long my knees are on the floor

My mom is very religious—Catholic—and from a young age they brought me to the church.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

God raises the level of the impossible.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart” “It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability that counts.” “Let God’s promises shine on your problems.” “Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.

Lord, we claim your strength to serve you, no matter what our circumstances may be. Amen.

We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.

God’s viewpoint is sometimes different from ours – so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things….In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strenght or our brains but simply because He has made us.

God has plans, not problems for our lives. The life of a Christian is an education for a higher service. God is training you for something.

We can’t solve problems for others. We can introduce them to the Lord.

A religion that is small enough for our understanding would not be big enough for our needs.

I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them.

I’m not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I’ve always liked the Buddhist religion. When I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

For me, religion poisons everything good in the world

I’m not religious in any sense

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful

I’m not militant about atheism, but I feel like religion has been imposed on me.

The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it’s called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn’t matter; try and do it without empowering women, you can’t do it. The benefits are so many.

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality.

In a rural society communities are “given” for the individual. Community is a fact, whether family or religion, social class or caste.

The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond.

Religion and culture are much in the news these days, usually as sources of difference and conflict, rather than for bringing people together. But the irony is that every religion has something to say about tolerance and respecting others

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.

The truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved.

Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread or stick in someone’s back.

God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

Our German forefathers had a very kind religion. They believed that, after death, they would meet again all the good dogs that had been their companions in life. I wish I could believe that too.

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.

Without Christ there is no hope.

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.

All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion, and forgiveness. The important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

I believe the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in that religion or this religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.

We who are saved find rest in Jesus. Those who are not saved will receive rest if they come to Him, for here He promises to “give” it. Nothing can be freer than a gift; let us gladly accept what He gladly gives. You are not to buy it, nor to borrow it, but to receive it as a gift.

If God had begun saving us because we were good, He would of course leave off saving us when we were not good.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

In all of my years of service to my Lord, I have discovered a truth that has never failed and has never been compromised. That truth is that it is beyond the realm of possibilities that one has the ability to out give God. Even if I give the whole of my worth to Him, He will find a way to give back to me much more than I gave.

His help is timely: He is a very present help in time of trouble. His help is very wise: He knows how to give each man help meet and fit for him. His help is most effectual, though vain is the help of man. His help is more than help, for He bears all the burden and supplies all the need. The LORD is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.

We continually encounter hardships. People disappoint us. We disappoint ourselves. But God is constant and compassionate. We are not alone. He cares. Against all reason, the transcendent God loves us so much that He has committed Himself to us.

When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yourself.

Times may be hard and people may be demanding, but never forget that life is special. Every single day is a special day. God is at work in you!

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

A society without religion is like a vessel without compass.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they’ll behave. You want people to believe in God so they’ll obey the law. That’s the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.

The Hindu religion is the only of the World’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Here we must ask, ‘Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?

The science of religion is one science within philosophy; indeed it is the final one. In that respect it presupposes the other philosophical disciplines and is therefore a result.

The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.