George Santayana Quotes About Religion

Quotes about: Religion

• Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.

  George Santayana

  War, Passion, Ambition

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.272, Рипол Классик

• Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

  George Santayana

  Miracle, Religion, Causes

  The Ethics of Spinoza introduction (1910)

• Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.

  George Santayana

  Imagination, Religion, Atheism

• Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

  George Santayana

  Religion, Fairy Tale, Tales

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.8, Indiana University Press

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

  George Santayana

  Passion, Knowing, Religion

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.159, 谷月社

• Fear first created the gods.

  George Santayana

  Religion, Atheism, Firsts

  George Santayana (1932). “The Life of Reason”, p.1222, Library of Alexandria

• Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.

  George Santayana

  War, Ambition, Buddhism

• The Bible is literature, not dogma.

  George Santayana

  Bible, Religious, Hygiene

  Benedictus de Spinoza, George Santayana (1910). “Spinoza's Ethics and "De Intellectus Emendatione".”

• Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

  George Santayana

  Religion, Advertising, Argument

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

• An operation that eventually kills may be technically successful, and the man may die cured; and so a description of religion thatshowed it to be madness might first show how real and warm it was, so that if it perished, at least it would perish understood.

  George Santayana

  Real, Successful, Men

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.40, Sheba Blake Publishing

• Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

  George Santayana

  Military, Victory, Religion

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.39, 谷月社

• Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

  George Santayana

  Inspirational, Life, Peace

  George Santayana (1953). “Persons and Places: My host the world”

• Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.

  George Santayana

  Heart, Men, Religion

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion”

• Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.

  George Santayana

  Love Life, Religion, Consciousness

  George Santayana (2014). “Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion”, p.37, The Floating Press

• Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's fine feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life.

  George Santayana

  Optimism, Feelings, Religion

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.11, Sheba Blake Publishing

• Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

  George Santayana

  Men, Religion, Atheism

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.450, Indiana University Press

• It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.

  George Santayana

  War, Men, Blood

  George Santayana (1986). “The Works of George Santayana”

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