Religious Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance

Michael Cunningham

The only wisdom I think I've attained is the wisdom to be skeptical of other people's ideology and other people's arguments. I tend to be a skeptic, I don't like dogmatic approaches by anybody. I don't like intolerance and a dogmatic person is intolerant of other people. It's one of the reasons I keep a distance from all religious beliefs. I think in this country and in Australia too there's a late intolerance in most religions, an intolerance, a part that could easily become persecutions.
We have some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects here in New York and I fear them as much as I would fear a Nazi organisation.

The person who, let us say, expects generosity from a bank, efficient flexibility from a government agency, open-mindedness from a religious institution will be disappointed. In each purview the notions represent immorality. The poor fool might as quickly discover love among the mantises.

The man who has a certain religious belief and fears to discuss it, lest it may be proved wrong, is not loyal to his belief, he has but a coward's faithfulness to his prejudices. If he were a lover of truth, he would be willing at any moment to surrender his belief for a higher, better, and truer faith.

William George Jordan

People are also more keenly and painfully aware that a large part of the Church is in one way or another linked to those who wield economic and political power in today's world.... Under these circumstances, can it honestly be said that the Church does not interfere in "the temporal sphere"? Is the Church fulfilling a purely religious role when by its silence or friendly relationships it lends legitimacy to a dictatorial and oppressive government?

Gustavo Gutiérrez

Worship is yet another paradox of the religious life: it is simultaneously the greatest duty and the greatest pleasure of faith. Worship is the act of truly loving God. Believe in this brilliant Being, this magnificent "higher power," who not only created us but nurtures us with care and intelligence beyond our imagination, and obviously we are called to worship Him.

The Indian mind is first religious, then anything else. So this is to be strengthened.

Swami Vivekananda

With that height, plus a face of an ugliness so transcendant as to be grotesquely beautiful, it was obvious why she had embraced a religious life—Christ was the only man from whom she might expect embrace in return.

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

And I'm not a student of religion, but I don't find anything in what the principal teachings of Islam that put us in contradiction at all. In fact, the principles are the same as what-we have a diverse religious culture. But it's kindness, it's be good to your neighbor, it's love, and it's take care of children. It's all these things that-so there's no anti-Islam.

George H. W. Bush

Thomas considers that a religious may legitimately aspire to the title and functions of master, but since he could only teach divine things, it is only in relation to the science of divine things that secular sciences can legitimately interest him. This is demanded by the very essence of the contemplative life, the teaching of which is nothing but its immediate extension into the order of the active life.

Étienne Gilson

When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I've been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That's a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans them-selves are literate, able to get the information, we're in an entirely new relationship to Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do.

Buckminster Fuller

Religious superstitions more than all other influences put together cripple & enslave woman, but so long as women themselves do not see it & hug their chains, we have a great educational work to do.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Futurists falter because they belittle the power of religious paradigms, deeming them either too literal or too fantastic.

The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crisis, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world's problems or their own. And things only look bleaker as we head into future.

The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn't seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer.

Peter Wessel Zapffe

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace.

A mosque is not a religious place. It is just a building. It can be demolished any time. If anyone disagrees with me on this, I am ready to have a debate on the issue. I got this information from people of Saudi Arabia.

Subramanian Swamy

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.

The strange thing about science is that if you have only a slight and superficial acquaintance with it, you are likely to lose your religious beliefs; but if you bother to delve somewhat more deeply, you are just as likely to renew and confirm your reverence for creation.

Sydney J. Harris

I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.

A common religion is not possible for India, but a recognition of a common basis for all religions, and the growth of a liberal, tolerant spirit in religious matters, are possible.

If such external influences are intrinsic to religion, then logic and scientific thought dictate that there must be a mechanism by which this influence is transmitted. A religious or spiritual belief that involves an invisible undetectable force that nonetheless influences human actions and behavior or that of the world itself produces a situation in which a believer has no choice but to have faith and abandon logic—or simply not care.

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South — as I have observed it and proved it — is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes; a justifier of the most appalling barbarity; a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds; and a dark shelter, under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal abominations fester and flourish. Were I again to be reduced to the condition of A slave, next to that calamity, I should regard the fact of being the slave of a religious slaveholder, the greatest that could befall me.

Frederick Douglass