Best 8213 quotes in «religion quotes» category

It is considered as artadhyan (adverse internal state that results in hurting the self) only when the mind and the Self (Soul) become engrossed with one another; and also when one does not realize that artadhyan has occurred. And if one realizes that artadhyan has occurred, then it is not called artadhyan; then it is the mind.

It is difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with all its accompanying disabilities, they always have been, and always must be, at a natural disadvantage in the struggle of life as compared with men.... With certain exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious the people the lower the status of the women...

It is easy for those who conflate religion with government to interpret any criticism of government or policy as an 'attack' on their 'faith'.

It is easy to understand that in the dreary middle ages the Aristotelian logic would be very acceptable to the controversial spirit of the schoolmen, which, in the absence of all real knowledge, spent its energy upon mere formulas and words, and that it would be eagerly adopted even in its mutilated Arabian form, and presently established as the centre of all knowledge.

It is easier to invent than to discover. Humanity does not have the patience to wait for the truth. Humans want utility – quickly! Religion and law were not created because they are true, but because they are utilitarian: they serve our needs. Or, do they?

It is far easier to move mountain than to move science by this one degree. We have the power to move mountain, if we have faith that the mountain can be moved. It is now that our faith is tested. The future of humankind hangs in the balance.

It is easy to see all that separates this mode of being in the world from the existence of a nonreligious man. First of all, the nonreligious man refuses transcendence, accepts the relativity of ' 'reality," and may even come to doubt the meaning of existence. The great cultures of the past too have not been entirely without nonreligious men, and it is not impossible that such men existed even on the archaic levels of culture, although as yet no testimony to their existence there has come to light. But it is only in the modern societies of the West that nonreligious man has developed fully. Modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation; he regards himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and he refuses all appeal to transcendence. In other words, he accepts no model for humanity outside the human condition as it can be seen in the various historical situations. Man makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He will become himself only when he is totally demysticized. He will not be truly free until he has killed the last god.

It is extremely difficult for believers, if not impossible, to draw a clear line between the facts and fantasies of their beliefs. Most often they are raised as children in the cradle of faith and, before they ever become capable of judging the truth or falsehood of their beliefs, they already become an integral part of their system. The few who awaken from their mental state of lethargy and oblivion do so at the cost of their religion but seldom admit this fact publicly. They keep wearing the same garb under the same title so that despite the loss of faith their religion continues to survive merely as a symbol of identity. This, unfortunately, is the fate of all religions which deny rationality any instrumental role in judging the validity of their beliefs.

It is extremely obvious to me that the internet is a religious phenomenon

... it is for God, when he pleases, to cast his enemies down to hell...

It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.

It is human, to want to feel connected with others, to strive for a sense of belonging. Yet the ultimate hack is is to belong with yourself. Once you belong within, You belong with all.

It is human religion (manav-dharma) when you give happiness to others, you will receive happiness and when you give unhappiness to others, you will receive unhappiness.

It is from the death of the social that socialism will emerge, as it is from the death of God that religions emerge.

It is human, to want to feel connected with others, to strive for a sense of belonging. Yet the ultimate hack is to belong with yourself. Once you belong within, You belong with all.

It is impossible to overemphasize the paradox represented by every hierophany, even the most elementary. By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. A sacred stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, from a profane point of view), nothing distinguishes it from all other stones. But for those whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into a supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as a cosmic sacrality. The cosmos in its entirety can become a hierophany.

It is important that a distinction be made between the assembly as defined by the New Testament and churches as they are known today...Compared with the pattern of the assembly of believers (ekklesia) as described in the New Testament, institutional churches fall far short.

It is in the nature of the human mind to give in, and hold on, to the source of solace with all the might it can muster. Life is hard and any figure that tends to ease the subjective perception of that hardship, attains a high pedestal of utmost reverence in the realm of the individual mind. It all takes place at a molecular level in the human brain with the purpose of self-preservation.

It is likely that religious beliefs have been so widespread because they tap into the psychological desires of many people, not because there is any external proof of their veracity.

It is man who forsake is Maker.

It is interesting to note that the overwhelming majority of all human beings who have ever lived were or currently are Pagans.

It is love, not religion, that gets you to Heaven.

It is in your hands to make life miserable or happy. No religion, spiritual leaders or knowledge will ever make you fully satisfied.

It is love, not religion, that gets you into Heaven.

It is more practical to make people transform their mindset about religion and religiousness and walk in the path of creed-less religious harmony, than to convert the entire religious population on earth into atheists.

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed

...[It] is my firm belief that all religions aim at making people better human beings and that, despite philosophical differences, some of them fundamental, they all aim at helping humanity to find happiness. This does not mean that I advocate any kind of world religion or 'super religion.' Rather I look on religion as medicine. For different complaints, doctors will prescribe different remedies. Therefore, because not everyone spiritual 'illness' is the same, different spiritual medicines are requires.

It is necessary for the future scientists interested in the field of Neurotheology, to have a bit naïve approach towards the whole idea of God and religion beyond the conventional labels of religion and atheism.

It is my belief that when a child has been robbed of their visionary rights that they gravitate toward religion and spirituality in an effort to regain their Subjective autonomy.

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.

It is no coincidence that every civilisation in human history has recognised at its foundation an element of sacredness, to which the civil authority is ultimately bound. The sacred is an awareness of moral boundaries that are not circumscribed by us, of an ultimate reason that cannot be found in us. It is the realisation that what binds us together as a society is something that lies beyond ourselves, and that human beings have an inherent value that cannot be arbitrarily limited or denied by political, economic or social power.

It is not about doing what we feel like. It is about doing what God says.

It is my opinion that religious experience may be a unique combination of Child (a feeling of intimacy) and Adult (a reflection on ultimacy) with the total exclusion of the Parent. I believe the total exclusion of the Parent is what happens in kenosis, or self-emptying. . . . I believe that what is emptied is the Parent. How can one experience joy, or ecstasy, in the presence of those recordings in the Parent with produced NOT OK originally? How can I feel acceptance in the presence of the earliest felt rejection? It is true that Mother was a participant in intimacy in the beginning, but it was an intimacy which did not last, was conditional, and was "never enough." I believe the Adult's function in the religious experience is to block out the Parent in order that the Natural Child may reawaken to its own worth and beauty as a part of God's creation.

It is not enough to be a man.

It is not enough to be a man... you have to become an idea... a terrible thought... a wraith- indeed- Become one with the darkness.

It is not a matter of whether one is biased or not. It is really a question of which bias is the best bias with which to be biased.

It is not I who live, but the Lord (& Taylor) that liveth within me.

It is not love to dictate love-to tell others how they should love.

It is not difficult to imagine the Catholic Church adopting, after a Tychonic transition, the Copernican cosmology some 200 years earlier than she eventually did. The Galileo affair was an isolated episode in the history of relations between science and theology. But its dramatic circumstances, magnified out of all proportion, created a popular belief that science stood for freedom, the Church for oppression of thought. Some historians wish to make us believe that the decline of science in Italy was due to the "terror" caused by the trial of Galileo. But the next generation saw the rise of Toricelli, Cavallieri, Borelli, whose contributions to science were more substantial than those of any generation before or during Galileo's lifetime. The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement. This becomes evident if we shift our attention from Italy to the Protestant countries of Europe, and to France. Kepler, Descartes, Barrow, Leibniz, Gilbert, Boyle and Newton himself, the generation of pioneers contemporary with and succeeding Galileo, were all deeply and genuinely religious thinkers. The pioneers of the new cosmology, from Kepler to Newton and beyond, based their search into nature on the mystic conviction that there must exist laws behind the confusing phenomena; that the world was a completely rational, ordered, harmonic creation.

It is not easy for students to realize that to ask, as they often do, whether God exists and is merciful, just, good, or wrathful, is simply to project anthropomorphic concepts into a sphere to which they do not pertain. As the Upaniṣads declare: 'There, words do not reach.' Such queries fall short of the question. And yet—as the student must also understand—although that mystery is regarded in the Orient as transcendent of all thought and naming, it is also to be recognized as the reality of one’s own being and mystery. That which is transcendent is also immanent. And the ultimate function of Oriental myths, philosophies, and social forms, therefore, is to guide the individual to an actual experience of his identity with that; tat tvam asi ('Thou art that') is the ultimate word in this connection. By contrast, in the Western sphere—in terms of the orthodox traditions, at any rate, in which our students have been raised—God is a person, the person who has created this world. God and his creation are not of the same substance. Ontologically, they are separate and apart. We, therefore, do not find in the religions of the West, as we do in those of the East, mythologies and cult disciplines devoted to the yielding of an experience of one’s identity with divinity. That, in fact, is heresy. Our myths and religions are concerned, rather, with establishing and maintaining an experience of relationship—and this is quite a different affair. Hence it is, that though the same mythological images can appear in a Western context and an Eastern, it will always be with a totally different sense. This point I regard as fundamental.

It is not enough to believe. Believe must lead to change of attitude and conduct.

... It is not possible, says Weber, to confer the objective validity of facts on the basis of a value-judgement; and second, it is not possible to judge the value of values through the use of scientific reason. This leads him to maintain a distinction between science and ethics, the former dealing with questions of fact, the latter with questions of value.

It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God's presence.

It is not very romantic, but reality is a better basis for building a relationship than fantasizing about a soul mate or counting on a god to find you a partner.

It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.

It is of immense importance, that first and foremost, people identify themselves as human beings, rather than as a believer in a spiritual belief system. Any spiritual belief system. There is such a preoccupation with where a person will be after he/she dies, that people keep on forgetting we are all here right now— on this planet! Okay, so you are on your way to Heaven, of course, whilst many others who do not believe as you do are on their way to hell, of course— but those are not yet facts! The fact that we do have, though, is the fact that we are all here right now, on this Earth, living this life, breathing this air, and it's about time we identify ourselves with the reality in front of us: that we are human beings and we all cry, laugh, love and hurt.

It is one thing to speak kindly to an irritating stranger on Monday. It is quite another thing to go on speaking kindly to the same irritating relative, or irritating employee, or irritating child day after day, week after week, year after year and come to see in that what God is asking of me, what God is teaching me about myself in this weary, weary moment.

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth.

It is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think ought to be God, what you think ought to be true.

It is only in the presence of God, we find the fullness of life and joy.