Quotes About Religious

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.

There has been a religious revival because - let me put it like this, the people that weren't traditionally religious, conventionally religious, had a religion of their own in my youth. These were liberals who believed in the idea of progress or they were Marxists. Both of these secular religions have broken down.

The Chief Justice's ... main point seemed to be that the references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance aren't really religious and therefore are not that important - something I would think would offend Christians who think it should stay because it is religious and does matter. Too many Christians appear to be desperate to shore up their failing confidence in their own religious beliefs by having the government officially endorse those beliefs.

Being holy . . . does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being exceptionally religious or being religious at all; it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it meas being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human.

It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.

Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.

I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons.

Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.

[T]he central problem of government is a religious one; and anyone who assumes that he can form his political beliefs without consulting his ethics, which have their basis in religious conviction, is deceiving himself either about the true nature of government or his moral responsibility for his actions

Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replace normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.

I really do think that art can save you in some sense. It's the last meaning, unless you're religious-and I'm not religious. It's the only secular vehicle for transcendence we have. It's an immediate self-validating experience. It lifts you beyond your mortal clay.

I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubt - or religious belief.

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. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel.

You ought not to accept the claim that this is a religious practice. I think that's, frankly, problematic for Islam, for well-intentioned Liberals like you to say that this is a religious practice when the overwhelming consensus of Islamic scholars around the world, and the overwhelming majority of Canadian Muslims, believe this has absolutely - that the niqab as face covering, that this symbol of misogyny has nothing to do with Islam.

To those who cite the first amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.

The lessons of religious toleration - a toleration which recognizes complete liberty of human thought, liberty of conscience - is one which, by precept and example, must be inculcated in the hearts and minds of all Americans if the institutions of our democracy are to be maintained and perpetuated. We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.

Who is telling us about the false self today? Who is even equipped tell us? Many clergy have not figured this out for themselves, since even ministry can be a career decision or an attraction to "religion" more than the result of an encounter with God or themselves. Formal religious status can maintain the false self rather effectively, especially if there are a lot of social payoffs like special respect, titles, salaries, a good self image, or nice costumes. It is no accident that the religious "Pharisees" became the symbolic bad guys in the Jesus story.

I am nervous about dogmas of any kind, whether they be religious, political, or anti-religious. Too many heads have rolled because of them.

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.

When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain.

I don't think Israel's becoming more religious, I think its politics is becoming more religious. There's a difference.

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

Religious people use 10% more pornography than secular people. The biggest consumers of pornography are Utah and Mississippi. All that religious preaching does no good.

I believe that religious education must be the sole concern of religious associations.

Your country needs religious leaders and religious politicians

Air Force officials appear to be more concerned with appeasing the powerful Religious Right lobbyists who have argued against any guidelines that seek to respect and protect the rights of all cadets -- not just those adhering to majority religious beliefs.

Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute.

I haven't been baptised. My dad's not in the church and is not a religious person. My mum is more spiritual - she does Thai-chi and goes to Stonehenge and things like that. I'm proud to be pagan. Finland is not really a religious country. I'm still looking for my god.

Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.

and while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn.

Governor Ford is sworn to support the Constitution of the United States and also of this State Illinois, and these constitutions guarantee religious as well as civil liberty to all religious societies whatever.

America is a very religious nation. Not a mono-religious nation because there are many different strands of belief, but there's something about this nation that inspires people, or perhaps draws people, who are strongly idealistic.

Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and his rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets.

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.

... religious insults are considered acceptable even by those who decry slurs about race, ethnicity, and gender. Religious people seem to deserve such treatment.

Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease.

There is no relationship here between Church and State. Religious liberty has its unalterable place, along with civil and human liberty, in the very foundation of the Republic. I hold it [religious intolerance] to be a menace to the very liberties which we boast and cherish.

An atheist can be charitable but not religious. But the religious man must be charitable.

According to my religious belief, I'm sorry if you feel like I'm pushing this on you - my religious belief is that you behave the way God wants us to behave. And that's simply love God and love one another. If we did that, there would be no need for any of the other commandments. It would be great. But in the same vein, we would have obtained paradise by that point. And it's tougher to get to paradise by that point.

I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.

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.

But theological change happens though selective quoting. Every religious person does it: You quote those verses that resonate with your own religious insights and ignore or reinterpret those that undermine your certainties. Selective quoting isn't just legitimate, but essential: Religions evolve through shifts in selective quoting.

Now, the topic of religion seems much more complex, and I have a more complex relationship with it myself because I love religious music. I often find myself wanting to be in a religious state of mind even though I don't intellectually believe it. I want to go to that place emotionally. So it doesn't feel like something that I really want to debunk in that way. It's just not where my interests lie at the moment.

If you become too sceptical, you become scientists. If you become too childlike, you become religious. Science exists with doubt. Religion exists with wonder. If you want to be religious then create more wonder, discover more wonder. Allow your eyes to be more filled with wonder than anything else. Be surprised by everything that is happening. Everything is so tremendously wonderful that it is simply unbelievable how you go on living without dancing, how you go on living without becoming ecstatic. You must not be seeing what is happening all around.

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

Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.

If you must believe in anything, believe in yourselves, in your senses, in your minds. To accept a religious creed is to accept another mind in place of your own and generally contrary to your own. When religious belief comes in brains go out

Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.