Religion Quotes - Page 56

Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.

A religion that never suffices to govern a man will never suffice to save him; that which does not sufficiently distinguish one from a wicked world will never distinguish him from a perishing world.

Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

No statistical proofs exist that prayer reduces illness and mortality, except perhaps through a psychogenic enhancement of the immune system; if it were otherwise the whole world would pray continuously.

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

The little religion that I have clung to-that what matters most is the continuity of life, and its improvement from one generation to another.

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness - by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.

We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn't admit it.

It is a fact of history and of current events that human beings exaggerate, misinterpret, or wrongly remember events. They have also fabricated pious fraud. Most believers in a religion understand this when examining the claims of other religions.

I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.

So much of religion is exegesis. I would rather follow in the footprints of Christ than all of the dogma.

Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

The Bible says that the the Lord thy God is a jealous God. But if you are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, and the creator of all that exists, of whom could you possibly be jealous?

God is honored by large, difficult, and impossible requests when we ask, seek, knock, and trust our loving Father always to answer for our good.

God alone is perfectly and consistently just. We forget; God remembers. We see an action; God sees a motive. This qualifies Him as the best recordkeeper and judge.

I'm a priest, not a priestess. Priestess implies mumbo jumbo and all sorts of pagan goings-on. Those who oppose us would love to call us priestesses. They can call us all the names in the world -- it's better than being invisible.

I'd rather be a born-once hog than a born-again Christian any day.

A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.

But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.

Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!

The Bible itself is intolerant, and true followers of God's word should be as well.

Religion needs a baptism of horse sense.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.

Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.