Religion Quotes - Page 33

• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Believe, Mankind

  "What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (p. 139), September 1930.

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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.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Atheist, Animal

  "The Lowest Animal" (1940)

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• All the men of the Old Testament were polygamists, and Christ and Paul, the central figures of the New Testament, were celibates, and condemned marriage by both precept and example.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Men, Example, Christ

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1993). “The Woman's Bible”, p.195, UPNE

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• The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind. . . . The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Men, Europe, Catholic

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• I read in the newspaper that the Catholic Church finally decided that it had been theologically improper to try to convert the Jews. Whoops! Sorry for all those inquisitions, crusades, and autos-da-fe. Previous popes were wrong - infallible, perhaps, but wrong.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Sorry, Catholic, Church

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• . . . I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.

  Thomas Huxley

  Desire, Failing, Proposal

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1967). “The Essence of T. H. Huxley: Selections Form His Writings”

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• He who has art and science also has religion, but those who do not have them better have religion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Science, Art And Science

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• True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility and poverty, and, despite mockery and disgrace, wretchedness, suffering, and death, as things divine.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Humility, Suffering And Death, Poverty

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• Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it [Christianity] degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction.

  Ouida

  Joy, Action, Christianity

  Ouida (1896). “Views and Opinions”

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• Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

  Larry Flynt

  Ideas, People, Use

  "Larry Flynt: What I've Learned" by john H. Richardson, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

  Kingsley Amis

  Funny, Faith, Humorous

  One Fat Englishman (1963) ch. 8

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• The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Atheism, Excuse

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• We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Respect, Religious

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  "Our Theatres In The Nineties". Book by George Bernard Shaw, 1932.

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• The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Rights, Political

  Thomas Jefferson (1984). “Jefferson: Writings”, p.593, Library of America

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• The reason for our success is no secret. It comes down to one single principle that transcends time and geography, religion and culture. It’s the Golden Rule – the simple idea that if you treat people well, the way you would like to be treated, they will do the same.

  Isadore Sharp

  Success, Time, Attitude

  "CEOs onPeople - In Conversation With Isadore Sharp, Founder and Chairman, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts". Lee Hecht Harrison Interview, onpeople.lhh.com.

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• Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

  Epicurus

  God, Spiritual, Religious

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• It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.

  John Ruskin

  Sacrifice, Giving, Church

  John Ruskin (1855). “¬The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.17

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• Humanity and Immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it;--but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.

  John Ruskin

  Heart, Dedication, Humanity

  John Ruskin (1858). “The Stones of Venice”, p.41

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• Many people make their own God; and he is much what the French may mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,--very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such a God is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone.

  Julius Charles Hare

  Mean, Sight, Hands

  Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare (1861). “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers: From the Fifth London Ed”, p.475

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• The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.

  Madame de Stael

  Feelings, Suits, Language

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• Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience.

  Matthew Arnold

  Voice, Human Experience, Humans

  Matthew Arnold (1869). “Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism”, p.12

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• Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than that, it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.

  Joseph Joubert

  Law, Discipline, Yoke

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.

  Joseph Joubert

  Multitudes

  Joseph Joubert (1867). “Some of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert”, p.98

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• Religion gives a dignity to distress.

  James Hervey

  Giving, Dignity, Distress

  James Hervey (1856). “Meditations and contemplations: to which is prefixed the life of the author”, p.33

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