Religious Quotes - Page 96

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.

I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.

Muslims stand by their religion entirely. It is a sort of religious absolutism. While Europeans have stopped defending the values of their civilization. They confuse tolerance with relativism.

I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electricity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.

Past boldness is no assurance of future boldness. Boldness demands continual reliance on God's spirit.

The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

For as long as I can remember, I've been the kind of person who goes against the grain and questions authority, and that doesn't make for an ideal religious follower.

The identity of just one thing, the "clash of civilization" view that you're a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian, I think that's such a limited way of seeing humanity, and schools have the opportunity to bring out the fact that we have hundreds of identities. We have our national identity. We have our cultural identity, linguistic identity, religious identity. Yes, cultural identity, professional identity, all kinds of ways.

In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.

To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.

There’s no such religious force in the West as powerful as consumerism.

This democracy... The elections in Iraq were held despite the American opposition. It was the will of the Iraqi people and the religious authorities. [The elections] were the result of pressure by Ayatollah Sistani, by the Iraqi religious authorities, and by the fighting forces in Iraq on America. They left the US no choice but to allow the elections.

Men are not revived because they sing; they sing because they are revived.

Walking in humility isn't focusing on what we are NOT; rather, it's declaring what God is.

Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve.

Just as a man's denominational orientation is the result of upbringing, and only the religious need as such slumbers in his soul, the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.

The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it.

Environmentalists and secular humanists insist that humans will destroy the planet. Corporate capitalists and many religious fundamentalists have no regard for wildlife and nature. Ultimately, this dualistic battle is based on false premises. In fact, this planet is more powerful than the human species.

Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him.

Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because its author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?

Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love.

All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.

As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.

Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.