Best 8213 quotes in «religion quotes» category

A desperate plea to the Trinity is not something you can just apologize for in the morning -Drunk Dialing the Divine

A devout Christian, desire Jesus Christ.

A disciple can be forgiven if he does not have great mental ability. He can be forgiven also if he does not display outstanding physical prowess. But no disciple can be excused if he does not have zeal. If his heart is not aflame with a red-hot passion for the Savior, he stands condemned.

A defense [of religion] is needed because none has been forthcoming. The discussion has been ceded to men who regard religious belief with frivolous contempt. Their books have in recent years poured from every press, and although differing widely in their style, they are identical in their message: Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false.

A democracy is not truly democratic unless it's secular.

ADOU RAM TAPOVANADI GAMANAM

A false religion is like the imitation of high fashion. The very presence of counterfeits proves the existence of the real. There would be no imitations without a genuine product. God’s original design has always had imitators and counterfeits!

Affirm the Scripture to revive your spirit.

A fanatic is a deeply religious man with no love in his heart

A friend of mine commented yesterday that she has experienced similar insights that I talked about that all enlightened Masters and founders of religion are actually talking about the same ocean, the same invisible life source, the same God. She also said that she worked in a Christan environment at the time that she received these insights, and when she tried to share these insights with the Christians she was accused of being "impure" and of being associated with the "Devil". Christians hold on to the idea that Jesus was the only son of God, without realizing that we are all son's and daughter's of God. By holding on to the idea that Jesus is the only son of God, they do not either to realize that all enlightened Masters are talking about the same God. Jesus did not talk about faith, he talked about trust. He talked about discovering a trust in yourself and in relationship to God. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you. In Christianity, the church has become the intermediate between man and God, and people who claim that they have found a direct relationship to God are accused of blasphemy. The Christan church has become a barrier between man and God, and anyone who has declared that he has found a direct relationship to God are immediately banned by the church, for example Master Eckhart and Franciskus of Assisi. I have always had a deep love for Jesus, but it is not the picture of Jesus that the Christian church presents. I was a disciple of Jesus in a former life, and was thrown to the lions in Colosseum in Rome as one of the early Christians. Jesus had many more disciples than the twelve disciples mentioned in The Bible. In this life, I resigned my automatic membership in the church as soon as I could think for myself when I was 15 years old. I was also disgusted with an organization that said that they preached love and which has murdered more people than Hitler. My experience with these rare and precious insights are that they expand our consciousness of reality. They are gradual initiations into reality. They may fade away, but we will never be the same again after receiving them. They will also come more and more, the more committment we have to our spiritual growth.

After Benjamin Franklin read Jefferson's draft, he picked up his quill, scratched out the words "sacred and undeniable," and suggested that "these truths" were, instead, "self-evident." This was mroe than a quibble. Truths that are sacred and undeniable are God-given and divine, the stuff of religion. Truths that are self-evident are laws of nature, empirical and observable, the stuff of science.

After seven days of fasten so it was, that the thoughts of my heart were very grievous unto me- and my soul recovered the spirit of understanding.

After the monkeys came down from the trees and learned to hurl sharp objects, they had had to move into caves for protection--not only from the big predatory cats but, as they began to lose their monkey fur, from the elements. Eventually, they started transposing their hunting fantasies onto cave walls in the form of pictures, first as an attempt at practical magic and later for the strange, unexpected pleasure they discovered in artistic creation. Time passed. Art came off the walls and turned into ritual. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present mindless, voracious trajectory, could land those of us lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.

After reading the Qur'an, I realized that I couldn't possibly endorse Islam as a religion, as a philosophy, as a moral standard, as an ethical code, or even as useful fiction. I determined that these philosophies and this image of Allah could only come from an extremely warped and disturbed person who suffered from an aggregation of the most severe and profound human weaknesses.

After Jesus showed up, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up. Of course, just because Jesus replaces the Old Testament doesn't mean that you should necessarily skip it. That would be like skipping Batman and Robin just because the story starts over in Batman Begins. The important thing to realize is that both the old and new stories are about an all-powerful being trying to rid the world of evildoers, only in the new one The Batman can eat pork.

After publishing The Age of Reason as an old man, Paine was beaten and turned out of his house and away from his town by his fellow citizens to punish him for blasphemy. I had, even then, a little glimmer of how dangerous it actually is for an American to behave like an American. We've never believed a word we've said from the Bill of Rights onward. What conceivable right to we have to feel smug about the fatwa imposed on Salman Rushdie by fanatical foreigners? We don't do badly with fatwas ourselves.

Agama bukan sekadar ritual dan tata cara. Ada makna di balik ritual dan tata cara itu.

Again, [amen,] I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:19-20)

Agama akan tetap, tapi yang mengalami perubahan adalah diri Tuan sendiri. Jangan jadikan agama sebagai aturan, karena Tuan akan merasa terbebani, tapi jadikan agama sebagai kebutuhan, maka Tuan akan mendapatkan ketenangan.

Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny. Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.

A god who becomes a man shows mercy. A man who becomes a god does not.

A glorious life is a spark of divinity.

A great woe underpinning the sorrows of the world today is this: so many people think they are far better than others and they are too righteous than others, and they know far better than others, and such thoughts give them reasons for an otherwise action!

Ah, 6655321, think on the divine suffering. Meditate on that, my boy.' And all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him, and then he went off to his little cantora to peet some more. So I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better that there was something in it. While the stereo played bits of lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion. So being in Staja 84F was not all that wasted, and the Governor himself was very pleased to hear that I had taken to like Religion, and that was where I had my hopes.

A halo is a cock ring for the soul.

A holy moonlit night turned into day, when the Sun appeared from the bosom of the Light—the Most High. The Sun became the Son of God. It stood as the Master in the center of its own system, radiating energy in all directions, towards and throughout the circumference. In that circle, the planets—disciples of the Sun—followed an order of strict consistency. They breathed in its heat, and looped around it in an act of worship.

Ah, Lord God be merciful to us all!

Ah, reader, I understand it is your kindness which fills you with this hubris, but it is hubris still. You presume, not only to advise your Maker, but to demand that He respond to your advice by revising the infinite and perfect Plan of His Creation precisely as you--with your flawed and finite wisdom--recommend?

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect.

Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I’ve urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board.

Ah, Toulouse, you have travelled too much. You know the gods of a hundred lands, those of the trees and mountains, the sky and sea, the stars and planets, of demons and angels, and even the Master of the Cosmos. But I am speaking of God. There are others, I’m sure, but only one God who created even great Zeus and Rama. Yet travel is like philosophy: a few years of it will perk the eye to differences, which you shall be able to notice with ease. Yet living as I have, travelling to lonely lands and through a thousand metropolises and hidden woods, you rather see the similarities. All becomes one, and God too becomes one. Not the sum of all those gods here, but beyond them, a being few philosophers have truly grasped. He has always been one, but he is severed in our minds. So it is up to us to piece him back together. If our souls possess a clarity beyond what our mortal nature can bestow, we shall see him.

A human being must have an auxiliary means of discovering the truth, a means that exists outside of his own belief or outside any alleged revelation. Otherwise…well, who’s to say he isn’t insane?

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

Ah well, I suppose that's the problem with trying to make others follow your own beliefs: what starts out as spiritual ardor too often becomes arrogance and bigotry.

A husband or wife did not have the right either to demand sex from his or her spouse or to refuse it, and there was a catalogue of forbidden sexual practices, notably homosexuality, bestiality, certain sexual positions, masturbation, the use of aphrodisiacs, and oral sex, which could incur a penance of three years’ duration. Nor were people to make love on Sundays, holy days, or feast days, or during Lent, pregnancy, or menstruation. People believed that if these rules were disobeyed, deformed children or lepers might result.

Ainsi donc, en s’alliant à un pouvoir politique, la religion augmente sa puissance sur quelques-uns, et perd l’espérance de régner sur tous.

Alas, God's poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use your reason, to look for a rainbow, you always run up against the great excuse, mystery. You will be advised to light some candles, put coins in the box, say a few rosaries, and make yourself stupid.

Al contrario di quello che credeva Dante - e molte religioni - nel settimo cerchio non ci sono i suicidi. Dio ha capito che quelli già ne avevano passate abbastanza. Ci è arrivato da solo.

A life based on [religious] faith is a life based on pure speculation, and speculation is, by its very definition, unsound.

A lie near to truth is always difficult to catch

A little murmur of admiration greeted this neat reply and on the crest of it the hostess rose to dismiss the meeting. The ladies rustled forward towards the lecturer but he, deprecating their flattery, came to greet Helena. "I was told your Majesty might do me the honor of coming." "I scarcely hoped you had recognized me. I am afraid the lecture was far above my head. But I am delighted to see you have prospered. Are you . . . are you able to travel as you wish?" "Yes, I was given my freedom many years ago by a kind, foolish old woman who took a fancy for my verses." "Did you get to Alexandria?" "Not yet, but I found what I wanted. Did you reach Troy, Highness?" "No, oh no." "Or Rome?" "Not even there." "But you found what you wanted?" "I have accepted what I found. Is that the same?" "For most people. I think you wanted more." "Once. Now I am past my youth." "But your question just now. 'When? Where? How do you know?'--was a child's question." "That is why your religion would never do for me, Marcias. If I ever found a teacher it would have to be one who called little children to him." "That, alas, is not the spirit of the time. We live in a very old world today. We know too much. We should have to forget everything and be born again to answer your question.

A little eccentricity is a help to a general. It helps with the newspapers. The women love it too. Southern women like their men religious and a little mad. That’s why the fall in love with preachers.

All Abraham's sons were taught that God would progressively reveal Himself. God's wholeness has yet to be realized. There will always be gaps in our understanding. Why should we fill those gaps with suspicion, bigotry and accusations? Men do it to women; Jews do it to Christians; Christians do it to Muslims. Yet, all these have an implied duty to Abraham. pg 54

All deities are external manifestation of humanity's internal divinity.

All atheists must examine the Non Aggression Principle.

All at once I felt myself haunted by a terrible vision, of a world without guidance: a land of emptiness, where all was ruled by the madness of chance. How could one endure such a place, where all significance was lost? I myself would mean nothing, but would merely be a kind of self-invention: a speck upon the wind, calling itself Wilson. I felt my spirit waver, as if it were toppling into the abyss before me.

All are ‘relative religions’, they do not give Moksha (ultimate liberation) but they push one towards Moksha.

All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

All forms of dogmatic thought create certain problems to the intellect, confining it to very narrow limits. The thought that is impossible to be criticized is going sooner or later to manipulate your own thought. The critical thinking area of the brain would immediately be blocked, if a person is convinced to blindly believe in the existence of some sacred texts or fundamental canons, which are allegedly representation of God's will or some 'perfect' human mind. As soon as emerges such an inevitable belief, the brain automatically begins to set some limits to its function, trying to give the dogmatic thought some rational sense with the help of science and logic, if it is possible, or merely to adjust blind imitation of them without any rational explanation and understanding, if it is impossible. It is very obvious fact that no intelligence can develop in that condition. Whatever rational and logical meaning you can find there, it is because of the brain activity, which gives dogmatism some reasonable sense. Without the brain activity, it is just a symbolism or merely absurdism. If this is so, why should any intelligence need the existence of any dogmatism, regardless of whether it is a religion or some kind of ideological doctrine?

All glory to the great God of wonders!