The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.
I don't like religion much, and I am glad that in the Bible the word is not to be found.
The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.
Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, Needs only to be seen to be admired.
The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced that which you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has just let you down.
No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.
Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
I can not imagine a God ... made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great'.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: