Religion Quotes

• Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

  H. L. Mencken

  Motivational, Atheism, Matter

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• Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.40, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Uplifting, Spiritual

  "The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology by and about the Dalai Lama" edited by Sidney Piburn, (p.52), 1990.

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• Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

  Karl Marx

  Religious, Atheist, Heart

  Karl Marx, Joseph O'Malley (1977). “Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy Of Right'”, p.131, CUP Archive

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• Answering a letter from a church asking what else they should try after having failed to raise enough money on bake sales, bazaars, suppers, etc. Why not try religion?

  Horace Greeley

  Church, Trying, Why Not

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• When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

  Desmond Tutu

  Bible, Prayer, Eye

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• Do all you can to preach the gospel and if necessary use words!

  Francis of Assisi

  Faith, Christian, Spiritual

  Attributed to Francis of Assisi in Alf Droy "The Lord is my Shepherd" (p. 84), 1999.

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  The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

  C. S. Lewis

  God, Christian, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.64, HarperCollins UK

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• I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

  Dan Barker

  Love, God, Christian

  Dan Barker (2009). “Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists”, p.89, Ulysses Press

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• A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

  Albert Einstein

  Sympathy, God, Death

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.39, Broadway Books

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• The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Life, Religious, Atheist

  George Bernard Shaw (1993). “The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929”, Viking Adult

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• Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

  Blaise Pascal

  Inspirational, Sad, Religious

  Pensees no. 894 (1670 ed.)

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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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  I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

  Gerry Spence

  Life, Faith, Religious

  "How to Argue and Win Every Time". Book by Gerry Spence, 1995.

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• Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Brother, Cutting

  "Man's Place in the Animal World" (ca. 1896)

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• What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Atheist, Humility

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.446, Princeton University Press

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• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, God, Spiritual

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.330, Princeton University Press

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• Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy.

  Dan Barker

  Atheist, Taken, Intellectual

  Dan Barker (1992). “Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist”, Freedom from Religion Fndtn

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• I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Party, Men

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.410, Cambridge University Press

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• Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

  Dan Barker

  Faith, Atheist, Real

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• The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.

  Al-Maʿarri

  Religious, Atheist, Intelligent

  "A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, Volume I". Book by John Mackinnon Robertson, 1906.

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• An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell me?

  Annie Dillard

  Life, Atheism, Inuit

  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ch. 7 (1974)

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• On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Fighting, Faith Religion

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826”, p.42, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Ideas, Atheism

  Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997.

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• The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.

  Thomas Paine

  Christian, Data, Atheism

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AGE OF REASON - Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Including “The Life of Thomas Paine”): Deistic Critique of Bible and Christian Church”, p.99, e-artnow

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