Religion promotes the divine discontent within oneself, so that one tries to make oneself a better person and draw oneself closer to God.
‐‐ Cyril Cusack
Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they're going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion.
‐‐ Sam Harris
Religion provides us with a puritanical dream, which can never be realized because it goes against human nature.
‐‐ Youssef Ziedan
Religion's in the heart, not in the knees.
‐‐ Douglas William Jerrold
Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.
‐‐ Stephen Spender
Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?
‐‐ Jonathan Sacks
Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It's a sort of crime against childhood.
‐‐ Richard Dawkins
Religion that is contained only within a church building is a weekend hobby, not a personal faith.
‐‐ James Lankford
Religion theme aside, most of the time I'm in some sort of comedy and I'm a straight man and it's really just, let's wind this guy up and see him explode.
‐‐ Colin Hanks
Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need.
‐‐ Bill Maher
Religion triggers a lot of emotions in me, most of which stem from being raised Jewish in a very Baptist community in the South. I didn't believe any of it from an early age - the clubby quality of whatever religion or church you belonged to, Judaism included. It just struck me as foolish.
‐‐ David Cross
Religion united its influence with those of loyalty and love, and the order of knighthood, endowed with all the sanctity and religious awe that attended the priesthood, became an object of ambition to the greatest sovereigns.
‐‐ Thomas Bulfinch
Religion unites man with God, or forms a communication between them; yet do they not say, 'God is infinite?' If God be infinite, no finite being can have communication or relation with him.
‐‐ Baron d'Holbach
Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.
‐‐ Voltaire
Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place - service - social service - the ants creed, the bees creed.
‐‐ John Galsworthy
Religion was quite a thing in our house - we were Baptists. Some Sundays I went to church three times. If there was a talk on missionary work in the afternoon, I could be there all bloody day. But religion took its first big knock after Dad died.
‐‐ Philip Kerr
Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.
‐‐ Azar Nafisi
Religion which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves.
‐‐ Laurence Sterne
Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.
‐‐ Hosea Ballou
Religion will prove to the believer a comforter and a sure guide to the fountain of true happiness.
‐‐ Ellen G. White
Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.
‐‐ Sojourner Truth
Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.
‐‐ Mark Hopkins
Religion works. I know there's comfort there, a crash pad. It's something to explain the world and tell you there is something bigger than you, and it is going to be alright in the end. It works because it's comforting.
‐‐ Brad Pitt
Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.
‐‐ Abbas Kiarostami
Religion, you can't a handle on it, you just have to know or not know-people either believe or they don't believe.
‐‐ Dennis Potter
Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.
‐‐ Gerard Manley Hopkins
Religions are the cradles of despotism.
‐‐ Marquis de Sade
Religions, by definition, disagree as to the truth - a reality that cannot be overcome by demanding that one or the other faith repudiate its claim to truth.
‐‐ Meir Soloveichik
Religions cannot change you. If you are angry, you will become an angry Muslim or Hindu. If you are righteous, you will become a righteous Christian or Jew.
‐‐ Gary Zukav
Religions die slowly.
‐‐ Franz Marc
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.
‐‐ Victor Hugo
Religions get lost as people do.
‐‐ Franz Kafka
Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs.
‐‐ Frans de Waal
Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.
‐‐ Karen Armstrong
Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.
‐‐ Margaret Atwood
Religions take donations and don't pay taxes.
‐‐ Deepak Chopra
Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune.
‐‐ Raymond Queneau
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
‐‐ Bertrand Russell
Religions themselves are... peace-loving. They can also be a constructive force in peace-building, and this also applies to the Middle East.
‐‐ Martti Ahtisaari
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
‐‐ Bertrand Russell
Religions work for their own aggrandizement - strengthen the church and so on - and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.
‐‐ B. F. Skinner
Religiosity turns out to be the best indicator of civic involvement: it's more accurate than education, age, income, gender or race.
‐‐ Jonathan Sacks
Religious and spiritual leaders should be held accountable for environmental activism, not only because they have access to large communities and can influence votes, but because service is integral to religious and spiritual life.
‐‐ Radhanath Swami
Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.
‐‐ Richard Rohr
Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
‐‐ E. O. Wilson
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
‐‐ Jon Meacham
Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honoured.
‐‐ Isaac Hayes
Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
‐‐ E. O. Wilson
Religious beliefs have played a vital role in forming America's character as well as my own. I was raised as a Lutheran, and I believe in God and consider my faith and involvement with organized religion to be an important part of who I am.
‐‐ Gary Johnson