Religion Quotes

• Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

  Seneca the Younger

  Wise, Religious, Atheist

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• The best proof that He will never cease to love us lies in that He never began.

  Geerhardus Vos

  Love, God, Lying

  Geerhardus Vos (2005). “The Letters of Geerhardus Vos”, Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company

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• God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Religious, Atheism, Mystery

  "Superstrings: A Theory of Everything?". Book edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, June 16, 1988.

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• The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Religious, Atheist, Fear

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• History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Strong, Atheist, People

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.224, Penguin

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• The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an apparently sacred character upon practices which have come down from more ignorant and barbarous times.

  Bertrand Russell

  Character, Practice, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.106, Oxford University Press, USA

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• In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Religious, Atheist

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814”, p.248, Princeton University Press

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• Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves in all the forests in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in Hell; that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain, and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this doctrine as the most infamous of lies.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Atheist, Children, Pain

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.216, Library of Alexandria

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• Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.

  George Washington

  Religious, Spring, Hatred

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1792). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Bible, Religious, Faith Religion

  Thomas Paine (1877). “The Age of Reason”, p.15, Lyle Stuart

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• Religions are the cradles of despotism.

  Marquis de Sade

  Tyrants, Literature, Cradle

  Marquis de Sade “Philosophy in the Bedroom: An Erotic Novel”, Library of Alexandria

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Humility, Humble

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Religious, Atheist, People

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• I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.

  Johnny Cash

  Mean, Ideas, People

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• Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesome.

  Benjamin Whichcote

  Political, Principles, Politics

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• You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist

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• God has no religion.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Spiritual, Favourite

  Speech by H.E. Vicki Treadell, British High Commissioner to Malaysia, at 16th Gandhi Memorial Lecture, www.gov.uk. October 13, 2016.

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• Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Atheist, Names, People

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• With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

  Steven Weinberg

  God, Religious, Atheist

  "Behaving Badly? Stop Using Religion as an Excuse!" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 2, 2014.

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• There was a time when I believed in the story and the scheme of salvation, so far as I could understand it, just as I believed there was a Devil... Suddenly the light broke through to me and I knew this God was a lie... For indeed it is a silly story, and each generation nowadays swallows it with greater difficulty... Why do people go on pretending about this Christianity?

  H. G. Wells

  Lying, Silly, Light

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• Under any religion, the preestablished impersonal code transcends the right of the individual to explore, experience, and marvel at the mysteries of his own life and death. Religions introduce us not to God but to slavery. They deprive us of our freedom to explore our own souls and to discover the endless and wondrous possibilities presented to us by an infinite universe. And most often the method of religions is fear, not love. They demand blind obedience and often obedience to dreadful dogma.

  Gerry Spence

  Life And Death, Soul, Demand

  Gerry Spence (2002). “Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life”, p.46, Macmillan

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• If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Bible, Atheist, Teaching

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1279, Library of Alexandria

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• If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace

  Voltaire

  Cutting, Land, Two

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.142, Penguin

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• 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, Atheist, World

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• The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.

  Salman Rushdie

  Atheist, Ideas, Progress

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “Is nothing sacred?”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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