Quotes About Religious

I'm very religious, you know. Now, OK, if by 'religious', you mean that I go to church every Sunday, read the bible faithfully, and I listen to Debbie Boone, umm, I'm not religious in that sense... But if by 'religious' you mean that I love others and try to help them whenever possible... Again, no. But if by 'religious' you mean that I like to eat coleslaw... Yeah, OK, OK!

Everyone talks about religious liberty, but no one believes it. So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.

In contemporary society secular humanism has been singled out by critics and proponents alike as a position sharply distinguishable from any religious formulation. Religious fundamentalists in the United States have waged a campaign against secular humanism, claiming that it is a rival "religion" and seeking to root it out from American public life. Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.

I could not for my soul distinguish ever the distinction between "religious anger" and "commonplace anger", "religious killing" and "commonplace killing", "religious slandering and irreligious", and so forth.

For a deeply religious purpose, there are people who do not personally believe that abortion is acceptable. I understand that. But this is a country where we don't impose religious beliefs on the entire country. This is a country where we accept differences of opinion.

While they came from a variety of religious backgrounds and held a wide variety of religious beliefs, each of our presidents in his own way has placed a special trust in God.

Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.

The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake.

Some 'separation' zealots would expunge any vestige of religious observance in public schools. Many of the same anti-religious fanatics would like to wipe out of existence all church-related schools, by regulation or taxation, so that universal ignorance of the life of spirit should prevail.

It is interesting to ask whether there's any general reason why being religious might make you do nice things or indeed nasty things. It's possible that people do nice things because they're religious. One reason might be they're hoping for a reward in Heaven, which is not a very noble reason.

I've known a lot of very religious people. My mother is very religious, but she was also very - is very private about it. She - when I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. So I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue.

With the near-death or clinical near-death phenomenon some people who are brought back from 'death' have reported being alive the entire time they were 'dead.' This phenomenon occurs among people with a wide diversity of religious belief and no religious belief at all - from atheists to Zen Buddhists.

Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief.

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.

Again, although I'm not a particularly religious person, I go back to the religious left that I come out of: There are moral imperatives to fight back. As Daniel Berrigan says, "We're called to do the good." And then we have to let it go. It's not our job to know where the good goes.

I think it is wrong for the federal government to force Christian individuals, businesses, pastors, churches to participate in wedding ceremonies that violate our sincerely held religious beliefs. We have to stand up and fight for religious liberty. That's where this fight is going.

Admit that the press transferred the pontificate of Rome to Henry VIII-Admit that the press demolished in some sort the feudal system, and set the serfs and villains free; admit that the press demolished the monasteries, nunneries, and religious houses; into whose hands did all these alienated baronies, monasteries, and religious houses and lands fall? Into the hands of the democracy? Into the hands of serfs and villains? Serfs and villains were the only real democracy in those time. No. They fell into the hands of other aristocrats. . . .

Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth.

Ever since you're little you hear this: 'The pilgrims left England to escape religious persecution and sneak religious freedom into the new world.' But even when you're little you're like, 'Umm.. Bullsh*t?'

As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers

[Tibet] is a small country based on religious principle, religious traditions. It never wanted any conquest.

We are a religious nation because we do not have a state religion, because the government guarantees freedom of religion but has no role in religion, because not only do we tolerate our religious differences, we celebrate them.

The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise

If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it's not religion, but you can train through education.

There are two kinds of comprehensive doctrines, religious and secular. Those of religious faith will say I give a veiled argument for secularism, and the latter will say I give a veiled argument for religion. I deny both. Each side presumes the basic ideas of constitutional democracy, so my suggestion is that we can make our political arguments in terms of public reason. Then we stand on common ground. That's how we can understand each other and cooperate.

What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

If you are really spontaneous, people will think you are mad. If you go to a tree and start talking, or to a flower, people will think you are mad. If you go to a church and talk to a cross or to an image, nobody will think your are mad, they will think that you are religious. You are talking to a stone in a temple and everybody thinks you are religious because this is the authorized form.

I'm not religious in the sense that I do not subscribe to any particular set of religious dogma. I don't go to church. I don't read the Bible. But I believe that the word "Spirit" with a capital S points to an ultimate reality which I give my heart to.

the heart of religion is not altered states but altered traits of character. For me, then, the test of a substance's religious worth or validity is not what kind of far-out experience it can produce, but is the life improved by its use? That's the test. Now, on that score, if you remove the "religious cocoon," the experiences don't seem to have much in the way of discernible, traceable effects.

The difference between my beliefs and having a religious faith is that I am prepared to change my views in light of new evidence, but someone of a religious faith will just stick their fingers in the ears and say: 'I'm not listening, there's nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.

I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, "Judge not lest you be judged."

The idea of a post-religious society is a fantasy, ultimately. Human beings are, by nature, religious in various ways.

Destroying a religious symbol and building a religious center are really the same thing if you don't think about it.

So many of my friends tell me they’re not religious. I’m like, Of course you’re religious. You watch Oprah Winfrey, don’t you?

I have tried reading the Bible but that's a tough read there. I watch a lot of religious documentaries. I have a keen interest in religion for someone who's not religious.

Every human being shall see in each and all of his fellow-men a hidden divinity... that every human being is made in the likeness of the Godhead. When that time comes there will be no need for any religious coercion; for then every meeting between one man and another will of itself be in the nature of a religious rite, a sacrament.

Religious liberty, hey, it's about religious liberty. And there has to be a melding of both. We're living in a time where you have to have a melding of both. But it's very unfair what they're doing to religion in this country.

The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious must come to an end.

I was raised in a religious environment, and my wife is one of the more religious people that I have ever known.

Let us labor for the security of free thought, free speech, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and equal rights and privileges for all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion;.... leave the matter of religious teaching to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep church and state forever separate.

The term religious cleansing is an accurate and effective way of expressing the current hostility and bigotry toward all civic expressions of religion... these religious cleansers use political and legal means of containment. They are America's new anti-faith bigots.

On the other hand, heroism is basic to the character of the Nordic peoples. This heroism of the ancient mythic period and this is what is decisive has never been lost, despite times of decline, so long as the Nordic blood was still alive. Heroism, in fact, took many forms, from the warrior nobility of Siegfried or Hercules to the intellectual nobility of Copernicus and Leonardo , the religious nobility of Eckehart and Lagarde, or the political nobility of Frederick the Great and Bismarck , and its substance has remained the same.

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.

I'm very ambivalent in my feelings about marriage. I think it promises a lot to people... sort of like saying, once you get married you are on the highway to heaven, and quite often it isn't that. I think marriage has always been based on a combination of religious and legal reasons.

Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.

There is absolutely no difference between religion and politics at all in Jesus' time. In other words, every seemingly religious word that came out of Jesus' mouth had very clear and unmistakable political connotations to it.