Best 6608 quotes in «religious quotes» category

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.

The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, "The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men.

The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.

The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and , as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism.

The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation . . . surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.

The attacks of September 11th were intended to break our spirit. Instead we have emerged stronger and more unified. We feel renewed devotion to the principles of political, economic, and religious freedom, the rule of law and respect for human life. We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom.

The bad news is that the movement toward the partnership side of the social scale (and it is always a matter of degree, as no society is a pure partnership or domination system) has been fiercely resisted and countered by periodic regressions. So domination systems have rebuilt themselves in different forms - be they secular or religious, eastern or western, leftist or rightist.

The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States.

The basic problem affecting the Pakistan today is human rights. Islamic fundamentalists have no roots among the common people and while they are pushing hard for religious fundamentalists to take hold, the common people still seek change through humanitarian and common human rights law.

The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.

The Beatitudes, far from being a new set of virtues that further divide the religious haves and have nots, are words of hope and healing to those who have been marginalized.

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as "we see now through a glass darkly" and "mysterious are the ways". He chooses His wonders to perform" are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window". Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it's all on purpose.

The belief in a satanic kingdom exists today only where religious and theological traditions keep this believe alive.

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

The best attitude to receive the Pope's teachings is to understand that he is a religious leader and the essence of his message comes from the Gospel, not from one ideology or another.And so, if our economic systems are not oriented toward the human person but only concerned with profits, he wants to confront the system and change it. This, by the way, is common to all the popes, it comes directly from the so-called social teachings of the church.

The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine.

The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.

The best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary. ... We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs.

The best predictor of a woman's involvement in terrorism, whether it's a secular or religious group, is a relationship with a terrorist: her father, brother, husband or even her son. Terrorism becomes a bit of a family business.

The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner. A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue.

The best way in the world to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God.

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.

The Bible contains some of the most sublime passages in English literature, but is also full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities.

The Bible is a book that has shaped my life, my beliefs, my ethics, my moral concerns, my religious outlook. This is not something, however, that I have taught or written about. This has been, if you wish, a private aspect.

The Bible Belt, the religious South, is the section of the country that practiced slavery until the war made them give it up. They practiced segregation. They practiced lynchings. I don't see any great value in that.

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.

The best way to prove that a stick is crooked is to set a straight one beside it. No words need to be spoken.

The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights which they found implicit in the Bible's teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned the convictions of those who framed the English system of law inherited by our own Nation, as well as the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

The bible is not a religious experience for me. This book bundles together the entire culture of Judaism: our language, our history, our geography. God is merely a byproduct of the bible.

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.

The Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things

The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless.

The bible never belittles disappointment, but it does add one key word: temporary - What we feel now, we will not always feel. Our disappointment is itself a sign, and aching, a hunger for something better. And faith is, in the end, a kind of homesickness - for a home we have never visited but have never once stopped longing for.

The Bible towers in content above all earlier religious literature; and it towers just as impressively over all subsequent literature in the direct simplicity of its message and...its appeal to men of all lands and times.

The Bible is really not a religious book but a divine manual written by the manufacturer of humanity by which the product man is supposed to live. If we learn those principles and obey them, then we find that the process of failure to success becomes more inevitability than experiment.

The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible,without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

[The Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests.

The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible.

The biggest religious wars and persecutions in history occur when religions, each claiming their own absolute truths, come into conflict.

[T]he bill exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates in particular the article of the Constitution of the United States which declares that Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.... This particular church, therefore, would so far be a religious establishment by law, a legal force and sanction being given to certain articles in its constitution and administration.

The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.

the biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.

The big problem is not whether the Bible is true. The big problem is whether it is true in you.

The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred. Which is fine with me! Any time a bunch of holy people want to go out and kill each other I'm a happy guy!

The brain is a stubborn organ.  Once its primary set of beliefs has been established, the brain finds it difficult to integrate opposing ideas and beliefs.  This has profound consequences for individuals and society and helps to explain why some people cannot abandon destructive beliefs, be they religious, political or psychological.

The bloody years of war and all the atrocities in European history have taught the Europeans that secular politics free of religious hatred is mainly a question of peace. This concept is not anchored in the same way in the consciousness of Turks, which has to do with the fact that the secular was forced upon us by the army.

The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we're doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.