Religion Quotes - Page 15

• When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

  Karl Kraus

  Atheism, Society, Culture

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• The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.

  Edmund Burke

  Principles, Resistance, Refinement

  Speech 'On Conciliation with America' 22 March 1775

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• Religion is nothing else but love of God and man.

  William Penn

  Men, God Love

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.68, Courier Corporation

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• Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.

  James Anthony Froude

  Sacrifice, Firsts, Elements

  James Anthony Froude (2004). “Short Studies on Great Subjects”, p.240, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• There are at bottom but two possible religions--that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe.

  James Anthony Froude

  Men, Two, Shapes

  James Anthony Froude (1872). “Short Studies on Great Subjects”, p.24

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• We use religion like a trolley-car--we ride on it only while it is going our way.

  Austin O'Malley

  Car, Use, Way

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• A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men

  Henry Ward Beecher, Augusta Moore (1859). “Notes from Plymouth Pulpit: A Collection of Memorable Passages from the Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, with a Sketch of Mr. Beecher and the Lecture Room”, p.56

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• Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.

  Alexander Pope

  Fire, Veils, Sacred

  'The Dunciad' (1742) bk. 4, l. 649

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• A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.

  Hosea Ballou

  Religious, Men, Joy

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• The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.

  John Campbell Shairp

  Soul, Relation, Humans

  John Campbell Shairp (1871). “Culture and Religion in Some of Their Relations”, p.30

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• Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

  Emile Zola

  Atheist, Fall, Civilization

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• The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Simple, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.349

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• I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.

  Billy Wilder

  Church, Nylon, Bags

  "Fictional character: Lorraine Minosa". "Ace in the Hole", www.imdb.com. 1951.

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• If there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable and doomed to ruin.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Religious, Men, Ruins

  Letter to Thomas Chalmers, October 11, 1841.

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• Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and not to be constrained by force.

  Josephus

  God, Worship, Force

  Flavius Josephus (1999). “The New Complete Works of Josephus”, p.24, Kregel Academic

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• God was created by evolution, inside the imagination of a primate.

  Steve Fowler

  God, Honesty, Editors

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• When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.

  Gerard De Nerval

  Dream, Religious, Reflection

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• A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Faith, Atheist, Godly

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• The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Men, Ejaculation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.463, Library of America

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• If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument... The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ideas, Imagination, World

  "Why I Am Not a Christian". "The First-cause Argument". Book by Bertrand Russell, 1927.

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• He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Science, Doe

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• When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  People, Political, Atheism

  "An Urchin in the Storm: Essays About Books and Ideas". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "The Quack Detector", p. 245, 1987.

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• The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Humility, Science, Arrogance

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• I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion.

  Patrick Henry

  Christian, Giving, Wish

  The Manchester Iris, a Weekly Literary and Scientific Miscellany, vol. II, p. 387, November 29, 1823.

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• Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Inspirational, Dog, Cat

  Christopher Hitchens (2007). “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, p.16, Da Capo Press

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