quotations about religion
If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to unknown recipient, December 13, 1757
Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God -- imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant -- and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave?
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Culture and Value
To me, it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities till it has thrown off the incubus of historic (and prehistoric) religion.
WILLIAM ARCHER
William Archer as Rationalist: A Collection of His Heterodox Writings
Religion, charity, pure benevolence, and morals, mingled up with superstitious rites and ferocious cruelty, form in their combination institutions the most powerful and the most pernicious that have ever afflicted mankind.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
journal, November 22, 1831
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
EUGENE O'NEILL
The Great God Brown
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Future of an Illusion
What is religion if not a guide to happiness, to bliss? Every religion instructs followers in the ways of happiness, be it in this life or the next, be it through submission, meditation, devotion, or, if you happen to belong to the Jewish or Catholic faith, guilt.
ERIC WEINER
The Geography of Bliss
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Character", The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.
SAM HARRIS
Letter to a Christian Nation
None more deceive themselves than they who think their religion is true and genuine, though it refines not their spirits and reforms not their lives.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
If the very nature of religion is change, and we don't progress individually or as a species, then we have been left behind. Change is inevitable. I'm not sure structured religion will allow this, hence why its necessary to leave, for everyone. Once this happens, then the only religion one needs is: Life.
GEORGE ELERICK
"How I Found God After Leaving Religion", Patheos, February 13, 2016
The foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. It is straightforward -- and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
MARTIN AMIS
"The Voice of the Lonely Crowd", The Guardian, June 1, 2002
Religion of your upbringing is like a cloak -- you must know how it is made in order to take it off.
BABA HARI DASS
The Yellow Book
I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith -- it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.
LIN YUTANG
The Importance of Living
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.
VOLTAIRE
Voltaire: Selections
Men think religion bears the same relation to life that flowers do to trees. The tree must grow through a long period before the blossoming time; so they think religion is to be a blossom just before death, to secure heaven. But the Bible represents religion, not as the latest fruit of life, but as the whole of it--beginning, middle, and end. It is simply right living.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Religion is a living process. When the Spirit takes hold of a man to transform him into a child of grace, working faith in him, and opening his eyes to see the boundless riches of grace, the work goes on continually. There is growth of knowledge, faith, and hope. The more the spiritual process advances, the more does religion become distinguished from all its outward forms, and attain likeness to the infinite benevolence of God.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
Faith