Religious Quotes - Page 283

Why? Why did God provide me with more than I need?

Somehow, what's in our hearts, good or bad is eventually translated into words and deeds.

How you live your life on this side of the grave determines what happens next.

God's extravagant generosity toward us compels us to be extravagantly generous toward others.

What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.

In this nonfundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle. It is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid.

God extends his grace to his people (and mankind in general) when he destroys the wicked, because in destroying the wicked, he is averting their evil works that so plague God's children and mankind in general. When he maims and kills cultists and theological liberals, he prevents the spread of heretical doctrine that damns souls...God's judgment - not his favor - leads the world to righteousness. We should petition God's judgment on the wicked because judgment is a form of grace.

One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment, and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far.

There was a time when Istanbul was one of the safest cities in the world, because people were afraid of the police. People are no longer as afraid of the police as they used to be. Mugging used to be almost unknown; now everybody is afraid of mugging. In that sense, the downside of liberalization is already being felt in Turkey. And of course some people are afraid of Kurdish ethno-terrorism, which worries Turks very much more than the religious sort.

As things change in Turkey people find in religious observance a certain framework of safety, of continuity. This is quite a common phenomenon. In a strange way it's part of a democratization of society. Although religious observance seems more common these days, it's not that people who did not go to mosques have started to go to mosques. I don't know anyone in Turkey who's become a born-again Muslim. It's a question of individual choice, and it does not stop the organic secularization of Turkish society, which carries on regardless.

Without faith we count down the days to death, with it we count up the days till happiness

In present-day America, expressing reverence for those who serve in uniform is something akin to a religious obligation. Everyone professes to cherish America's "warriors." Yet such bountiful, if superficial, expressions of regard camouflage a growing gap between those who serve and those who applaud from the sidelines. Our present-day military system, based on the misnamed All-Volunteer Force, is neither democratic nor effective. Why has discussion and debate about its deficiencies not found a place among the nation's political priorities?

A country that has really resonated with me and I was really impressed with was Israel. I found that the whole country had a very special atmosphere. I was there to perform, but it was one of the few places that I've visited over the years that I had some free time to explore, and I was hugely impressed by all the religious history there.

I grew up as a Mormon, and that had more of an impact on my values than my beliefs. I'm afraid I will always feel the weight of a lie. I'm very hard on myself anyway. Religious guilt carries over too. You can't really misbehave without feeling badly about it. At least, I can't.

Black Box is not a statement about injustice committed against Sephardi Oriental Jews or about the extremism of religious Jews or the lack of imagination of the old Israeli elites. It's a human story, in my view, first and foremost about a mystical communion between enemies. This is the inner story of the novel. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.

The closest place that I feel like I come to having religious moments is always musical.

In Jerusalem, the various modes of worship essentially stood for the same cause but were equally hateful to one another. They never served as a unifying factor. Their adherents were equally manipulated by the clergies to regard the others as wicked infidels or idolaters. The centuries passed in constant pious agitation and in frequent religious wars.

Religious minorities (including Jews) will have to wear special insignia in Iraq

EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.

EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.

Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.

As with many metaphysical and religious questions, Kant thinks they lie beyond our power to answer them. If you can't stand the frustration involved in accepting this, and insist on finding some more stable position which affords you peace of mind and intellectual self-complacency, then you will find Kant's position "problematic" in the sense that you can't bring yourself to accept it. You may try to kid yourself into accepting either some naturalistic deflationary answer to the problem or some dishonest supernaturalist answer.

It was an important part of Mendelssohn's philosophical and religious view that the traditional rationalist proofs for God's existence should be sound an convincing. Kant thought they were not. So Kant's critique was world-shaking for Mendelssohn.