Religious Quotes - Page 228

I was very religious when I was younger. I went to a seminary for three years, studied to be a priest, and um, so that sort of natural idealism just um sort of carried over into my feelings about joining the army.

To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. Religious beliefs give a spurious spiritual dimension to tribal enmities.

The state, frankly, could care less. Historically, the state has been able to use any religious point of view for its own ends. . . . The examples of government misusing religion are endless.

The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis.

To be an atheist you have to have ten thousand times more imagination than if you are a religious fundamentalist. You must take the responsibility to acquire information, digest and use it to understand what you can.

With the man in the woman, and the woman in the man. In the blood of Eden lie the woman and the man.

Phil Cousineau has created a fine companion book to accompany the important film he and Gary Rhine have made in defense of the religious traditions of Native Americans. [Native Americans] are recognized the world over as keepers of a vital piece of the Creator's original orders, and yet they are regarded as little more than squatters at home. This book features impressive interviews, beautiful illustrations, and gives a voice to the voiceless.

Sometimes I envy religious people for the comfort of believing. It would make everything so much easier.

Once you're in a kind of revealed religious tradition, you wind up having to explain how the things said about God in the Bible or the Qur'an or whatever religious text you're dealing with, why these statements are true.

Prayer TV looks like pay TV to me.

I respect those who follow religious routes only if they seem to me to be morally proper and in accord with the modern world.

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American.

I'm not a practicing Catholic now. I didn't like what the church was doing with what Jesus had said, in a way. But I wouldn't say I'm not religious.

The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.

If you look back at history or you look at any place in the world where religious groups or ethnic groups or racial groups or political groups are killing each other, or families have been feuding for years and years, you can see - because you're not particularly invested in that particular argument - that there will never be peace until somebody softens what is rigid in their heart.

The Lord often has his prophets climb mountains to converse with Him. I always wondered why He did that, and now I know the answer: when we are on high, we can see everything else as small. Our glory and sadness lose their importance. Whatever we conquered or lost remains there below. From the heights of the mountain, you see how large the world is, and how wide its horizons.

We must dress according to the dictates of fashion, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hairstyle, criticize anyone who's different, go to a religious service and beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise the other tribe who worships a false god.

I never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. I had never attended church, was never raised in a religious home, never had any insight of God or who he was until I was 18 years old.

Our planet is a tiny atom in god's kingdom.

Religious concepts and vocabulary are certainly censored in these textbooks.

In grades 1 through 4 these books introduce the child to U.S. society - to family life, community activities, ordinary economic transactions, and some history. None of the books covering grades 1 through 4 contain one word referring to any religious activity in contemporary American life.

School textbooks have almost completely excised any reference to America's true religious heritage.

There is not one text reference to characteristic Protestant religious life in these books... The dominant theme is the denial of religion as an actual part of American life.

Many people question their religious identity today, not necessarily by thinking of converting to Judaism or to Islam: it's just that technologies seriously challenge the status of the human being. All technologies converge toward the same spot, they all lead to a Deus ex Machina, a machine-God.

A religious test for entering our country is not reflective of America's fundamental values. I reject it.