Irreligion Quotes

• The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Country, Winning, Political

  Zorach v. Clauson (dissenting opinion) (1952)

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• Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Religion, Atheism, World

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.115, 谷月社

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• When, from the top of any high hill, one looks round the country, and sees the multitude of regularly distributed spires, one not only ceases to wonder that order and religion are maintained, but one is astonished that any such thing as disaffection or irreligion should prevail.

  William Cobbett

  Country, Order, Looks

  William Cobbett's letter to William Windham, May 27, 1802.

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• Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.

  Robert Graves

  Religious, Home, Feelings

  Robert Graves (1957). “Good-bye to all that”, Turtleback Books

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• What man needs is not philosophy or religion in the academic or formalistic sense of the term, but ability to think rightly. The malady of the age is not absence of philosophy or even irreligion but wrong thinking and a vanity which passes for knowledge. Though it is difficult to define right thinking, it cannot be denied that it is the goal of the aspirations of everyone.

  Krishnananda Saraswati

  Philosophy, Men, Thinking

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• 

  Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.

  Jon Stewart

  Death, Hope, Atheist

  "The Daily Show". www.imdb.com. 1996 - ....

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• Running away for fear of death, leaving one's dear ones, temples or music to take care of themselves, is irreligion; it is cowardice.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, Dear Ones, Leaving

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works”

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• It is no religion to have for one's wife a girl who is fit only to sit in one's lap, it is the height of irreligion.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Girl, Wife, Religion

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• Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

  David Bentley

  Religious, Powerful, Ignorance

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• One may sigh for all that one loses in giving up the old religion... but the new irreligion is the manlier, honester and simpler thing, and affords a better throry of life and a more solid basis for morality.

  Charles Eliot Norton

  Giving Up, Atheism, May

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• One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.

  Joseph Addison

  Wrath, Safety, Atheism

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• To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.

  George Berkeley

  Country, Men, Wish

  George Berkeley (1843). “Works, Including His Letters to Thomas Prior, Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. to which is Prefixed an Account of His Life”, p.355

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• You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Giving, Answers, Nuclear

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.

  Laurence Sterne

  Vices, Dishonesty, Murder

  Laurence Sterne (1805). “The Works of Laurence Sterne, A. M.: A sentimental journey through France and Italy. The Koran: or, The life, character and sentiments of Tria Juncta in Uno. A political romance”, p.331

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• No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Hurt, Pain, Cities

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• We who defend Christianity find ourselves constantly opposed not by the irreligion of our headers but by their real religion.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Miracle, Christianity

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• My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again.

  Salman Rushdie

  Growing Up, People, Parent

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• the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles. ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.

  George Eliot

  Christian, Attitude, Lying

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