Religious Quotes - Page 62

The best way to get rid of the Devil, if you cannot kill it with the words of Holy Scripture, is to rail at and mock him. Music, too, is very good; music is hateful to him, and drives him far away.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but the fly comes close.

There is no ground whatever for the claim, so often made by religious apologists, that these ideals are specifically Christian and originated with Jesus. What were specifically Christian were some of the less enlightened teachings, which have done untold harm. Christians claim that organised Christianity has been a great force for good, but this view can be maintained on one assumption only: that everything good in the Christian era is a result of Christianity and everything bad happened in spite of it.

One of the best ways to walk in love is to be a blessing to other people or simply to help them.

All the sins of your life seem to be rising up against you. Don't give up hope! On the contrary, call your holy mother Mary, with the faith and abandonment of a child. She will bring peace to your soul.

Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom.

A great unification is now taking place between science and spirituality. The most advanced discoveries of modern science are rising to reaffirm the timeless wisdom of the great religious and spiritual traditions of every culture.

More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels - what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds - all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world - just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope.

It is in struggle and service with our brothers and sisters, individually and collectively, that we find the meaning of life.

...Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which prevades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.

All my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.

God requires not the doing of the commandments for their own sake, but the correction of the soul, for whose sake He established the commandments.

It is impossible to draw near to God without sorrows, without which human righteousness cannot remain unchanged... If you desire virtue, than give yourself to every affliction, for afflictions produce humility. If someone abides in virtue without afflictions, the door of pride is opened to him.

Following a meeting with Hitler, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, a man who had 'courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on the Catholic Church' - went away convinced that Hitler was deeply religious.

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

The misfortune is, that religious learning is too often rather considered as an act of the memory than of the heart and affections; as a dry duty, rather than a lively pleasure.

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

the Republicans love to say that the Democratic Party is ruled by 'special interests.' But when pressed to name these 'special interests,' the usual reply is women, blacks, teachers, and unions. Those are 'special interests' to be proud of - because together they comprise the majority of Americans. What about the 'special interests' that dominate the Republican Party - the oil companies, the banks, the gun lobby, and the apostles of religious intolerance?

I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.

The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanors. There is something else here, and there will always be something else - something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else.

Atheists tend to read only each other’s books and not the work of the religious thinkers they are supposedly refuting.

That is the essence and mission of 'rebel buddha': to free us from the illusions we create by ourselves, about ourselves, and from those that masquerade as reality in our cultural and religious institutions.

The Founders never intended to separate Christianity from government, only to keep a single denomination from running the nation.

As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.