Religion Quotes

Quotes About Religion From Million Quotes

 




The purpose of all major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts. - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama


There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. - John Updike, Self-Consciousness, 1989


A religion without the element of mystery would not be a religion at all. - Edwin Lewis


It is doubtless true that religion has been the world's psychiatrist throughout the centuries. - Karl Menninger


I was reading this really interesting article in the American Psychiatric Journal.... research shows that going to church actually boosts your immune system, decreases your blood pressure, and reduces stress. It's kind of like an antioxidant from God. - Bones, "The Repo Man in the Septic Tank," original airdate 2014 March 17th, spoken by the character Seeley Booth, writing credits M.Peterson, H.Hanson, and K.Reichs


Debating theological niceties is fine, and even useful, but if it distracts us from the Greatest Commandments, then we're doing something wrong. - David C. Hill, ***Dave Does the Blog (hill-kleerup.org/blog)


Religion is the metaphysics of the masses. - Arthur Schopenhauer


All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays. - Cathy Ladman


No religion is a true religion that does not make men tingle to their finger tips with a sense of infinite hazard. - William Ernest Hocking


The church is the great lost and found department. - Robert Short


I speak not of men's creeds—they rest between
Man and his Maker.
- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage


By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. - Thomas Merton


[I]n all sincerity she began her search, and with pathetic patience waited for an answer. She read many books, some wise, some vague, some full of superstition, all unsatisfactory to one who wanted a living God. She went to many churches, studied many creeds, and watched their fruits as well as she could; but still remained unsatisfied.... There was too much machinery, too many walls, laws, and penalties between the Father and his children. Too much fear, too little love... too little faith in the instincts of the soul which turns to God as flowers to the sun. Too much idle strife about names and creeds; too little knowledge of the natural religion which has no name but godliness, whose creed is boundless and benignant as the sunshine, whose faith is as the tender trust of little children in their mother's love. - Louisa May Alcott, "Through the Mist," Work: A Story of Experience, 1873


God made so many different kinds of people. Why would he allow only one way to serve him? - Martin Buber


All religions must be tolerated... for... every man must get to heaven his own way. - Frederick the Great


This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - Dalai Lama


People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.


Most men's anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady that neither of them care for. - George Savile, Marquess de Halifax


Most sermons sound to me like commercials — but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstances. - Theodore Dreiser, 1941


I like the silence of a church, before the service begins better than any preaching. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


All men have need of the gods. - Homer


There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. - George Bernard Shaw


Philosophy is the love of wisdom: Christianity is the wisdom of love. - Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


I'm afraid I never shall get religion, for all that's offered me seems so poor, so narrow, or so hard that I cannot take it for my stay. A God of wrath I cannot love; a God that must be propitiated, adorned, and adored like an idol I cannot respect; and a God who can be blinded to men's iniquities through the week by a little beating of the breast and bowing down on the seventh day, I cannot serve. I want a Father to whom I can go with all my sins and sorrows, all my hopes and joys, as freely and fearlessly as I used to go to my human father, sure of help and sympathy and love. Shall I ever find Him? - Louisa May Alcott, "Through the Mist," Work: A Story of Experience, 1873


Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca the Younger


No man treats a motor car as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, he does not say, "You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go." He attempts to find out what is wrong and set it right. - Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?


My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine. - Austin O'Malley


If there were no God, there would be no Atheists. - G.K. Chesterton


[R]eligion cannot be given or bought, but must grow as trees grow, needing frost and snow, rain and wind to strengthen it before it is deep-rooted in the soul. - Louisa May Alcott, "Through the Mist," Work: A Story of Experience, 1873


The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world, from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to go to hell. - Sean Ningen


Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. - G.K. Chesterton


A faith of convenience is a hollow faith. - M*A*S*H, "A Holy Mess," original airdate 1982 February 1st, written by Larry Gelbart, Elias Davis, Richard Hooker, Ring Lardner Jr, David Pollock, and W.C. Heinz, spoken by the character Father Mulcahy


The churches must learn humility as well as teach it. - George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan


I considered atheism, but there weren't enough holidays. - Author Unknown


A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to degrade its God. - Havelock Ellis


Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. - John Morley


In church, sacred music would make believers of us all — but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. - Mark Twain


Traveler: "God has been mighty good to your fields, Mr. Farmer."
Farmer: "You should have seen how he treated them when I wasn't around."
- Author Unknown


I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. - Doug McLeod


I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents become better people as a result of practicing it. - Joe Mullally





Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. - William James


You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott


But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most? - Mark Twain


Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soul-less conditions. It is the opium of the people. - Karl Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," 1884


I believe in God, I just don't trust anyone who works for him. - Author unknown, from a stand-up comedy routine on television


There are three religious truths: 1) Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. 2) Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian faith. 3) Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store or at Hooters. - Author Unknown


Not all religion is to be found in the church, any more than all knowledge is found in the classroom. - Author Unknown


Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. - Author Unknown


If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane. - Robert G. Ingersoll


It is fear that first brought gods into the world. - Gaius Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon


If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides. - Old Yiddish Proverb


The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. - Richard Burton


Religion is a fashionable substitute for Belief. - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891


I'm not religious, but I like God and he likes me. - Tony Kushner, Angels in America




Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? - Douglas Adams


No creed can be stretched to the size of truth; no church can be made as large as man. - Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays


Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. - David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, 1739


In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty. - Thomas Jefferson


I didn't know I had a quarrel with him. - Henry Thoreau in answer to the question, "Have you made your peace with God?"


In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners. - Jonathon Miller


I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. - George Carlin


It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. - Thomas Jefferson





Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it. - Diderot, Pensées philosophiques, 1746


If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did." - Jack Handey, "Deep Thoughts"


When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out. - Frank Sinatra


That which has remained in the heart of man after his unhappy fall is for him a religion. He attaches himself to those fragments, which are at least those of truth. He lovingly preserves these remnants of his ancient opulence. He seats himself weepingly on these ruins; he will not have them taken from him. Perhaps he knows that such ruins are the cornerstone of the colossal edifice which shall one day arch high above his consoled race its lofty and tutelary dome. Whosoever insults these ruins insults man's wretchedness, despoils his indigence. Humanity cannot afford to hold cheap the feeble beliefs that remain to it; it pronounces an anathema on the hand that would fain outrage those fragments, and heap up fresh ruins amongst those that already exist. - Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)


My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God. - Albert Einstein


Oh, honey, God don't care which church you go, long as you show up! - Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias


Some people would have us love, or rather obey God, chiefly because he outbids the devil. - Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist. - G.C. Lichtenberg


I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless. - Peter Walker


What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. - George Santayana, Reason in Religion


Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. - Ambrose Bierce


"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction. - Author Unknown


A man without religion is like a horse without a bridle. - Latin Proverb


There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave. - Louis Kronenberger


The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? - John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1815 June 20th


Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. - Michel de Montaigne, translated


It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. - Denis Diderot


How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757


Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. - C.C. Colton


To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. - Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinthes, 1962


A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. - Francis Bacon, Essays: Of Atheism, 1625


There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. - Desmond M. Tutu, "Religious Human Rights and the Bible"


A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. - James Feibleman, Understanding Philosophy, 1973


I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. - Pearl S. Buck


An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?" - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek


I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. - D. Dale Gulledge


The faith that stands on authority is not faith. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. - Edgar Allen Poe


On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position one hundred percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism. - Barry Goldwater





People who rely most on God rely least on themselves. - Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays


God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning. - Imamu Amiri Baraka


Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny. - George Santayana


To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God. - Victor Hugo


It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. - Abraham Lincoln, quoted in What Great Men Think Of Religion by Ira Cardiff


Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains.... But it can put mountains where there are none. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1879


The Bible is literature, not dogma. - George Santayana


The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings. - Garrett Hardin





The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people. - Ezra Pound


Take no alarm, dear reader, at the sound of the word Religion, for I have not the least idea of conducting you into some dark, subterranean cathedral where the air is oppressive and unnatural, but would lead you right out under heaven's sunny dome, where the joyous gospel of nature and inspiration are breathed into the soul....
This cosmical religion, broad as the world and reaching out to the infinite, as far transcends the man-made creeds that run counter to nature's laws, as the sky transcends all cathedrals that lift up their puny spires beneath it. I have aimed to lead my dear struggling human brothers and sisters into the vestibule of the Temple of Life where are joys forevermore, and where the radiant soul of things begins to appear.
- Edwin D. Babbitt, Religion as Revealed by the Material and Spiritual Universe, 1881


In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it. - John Updike, A Month of Sundays, 1975


Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. - Mark Twain


In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination. - Mark Twain


Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion. - Robert Green Ingersoll


How can the Church be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible? - John W. Draper


Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. - Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long


The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress. - Emmet F. Fields


When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned. - Robert Ingersoll, Some Reasons Why


Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks. - Picket Fences


Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "Does not!" - Author Unknown


We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. - H.L. Mencken


If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment. - Voltaire


God is innocent. Noah built in a flood plain. - Author Unknown


To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. - Ghose Aurobindo


Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing... he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does one see him laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed Buddha guffawing with arms upraised. - Author Unknown


The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. - Alfred North Whitehead


Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it. - Søren Kierkegaard, Time, 1946 December 16th


Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. - Andrew Lias


Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founders' than any other agency in the world. - Richard Le Gallienne


I prefer to think of them as the Ten Suggestions. - Author Unknown


If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction. - Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?


God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. - Voltaire


It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin. - H.L. Mencken


On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking forty days to find a place to park. - Curtis McDougall


An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. - Robert Ingersoll, quoted in Ingersoll the Magnificent


Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver. - Robert G. Ingersoll


Christianity is not a religion; it's an industry. - Author Unknown


It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead. - Robert G. Ingersoll


Such religion is Churchianity; it is not Christianity. Christianity means the religion where Christ is all; Churchianity, the religion where the Church is all. - John Cumming, "Salvation," sermon preached before the Queen, 1850 September 22nd


Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. - Chapman Cohen


The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. - Bono


None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The records do not show that Adam and Eve were married. - Ed Howe


In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. - Stephen J. Gould


The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. - George Bernard Shaw


Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes. - E. Haldeman-Julius, The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life


Instead of being born again, why not just grow up? - Author Unknown


A great deal of what passes for current Christianity consists in denouncing other people's vices and faults. - Henry H. Williams


The point is, could God pass an examination in Theology? - Malcolm Muggeridge


Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. - Author Unknown


They were allowed to stay there on one condition, and that is that they didn't eat of the tree of knowledge. That has been the condition of the Christian church from then until now. They haven't eaten as yet, as a rule they do not. - Clarence Darrow


Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths. - Muhammad Ali


A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain — then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system? - Robert A. Heinlein


I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science. - Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason


I believe in God, but I'm not too clear on the other details. - Bill Veeck


People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. - Dave Barry


There is no War on Christmas. It is imaginary. What there is, though, are more people who are saying such evil and oppressive things as — gasp — Happy Holidays! And Season's Greetings. Oh, the horror! There is no demand that people stop saying Merry Christmas — far from it. What people are doing, is being inclusive. There is no grand conspiracy to stop people from saying Merry Christmas. If you want to say it, be my guest. But please don't think, arrogantly, that it's the only thing the season is about.
There is no War on Christmas. It's imaginary. It's scaremongering. It's along the lines of "Gay marriage will destroy America" and "Intelligent Design is a valid alternative to science." Just more far-right-wing rhetoric.
If you celebrate Christmas, then Merry Christmas. If you celebrate Hanukkah, then Happy Hanukkah. If Kwanzaa is your thing, then Happy Kwanzaa. If you want to celebrate Festivus, hell, be my guest — Festivus for the rest of us. Fine by me. You want to celebrate Saturnalia? That's cool, retro is always fun. But in the meantime, rather than guess the religion of the person I'm saying it to, I'll just say this: Happy Holidays!
- Rob Dalton, "The Imaginary War on Christmas," The First Church of Free Speech (because other churches have commandments prohibiting this kind of thing), 2005


Merry Christmas v. Happy Holidays... Why be exclusive when you can be inclusive? - S.A. Sachs


If God doesn't like the way I live, let him tell me, not you. - Author unknown


No rage is equal to the rage of a contented right-thinking man when he is confronted in the marketplace by an idea which belongs in the pulpit. - Thurman W. Arnold


Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell while they are going to heaven somehow make me very glad that we're going to separate destinations. - Martin Terman


The myths about Hades and the gods, though they are pure invention, help to make men virtuous. - Diodorus Siculus, c. 20 BC


The Bible may be the truth but it's not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. - Samuel Butler


Religion seems to have a way of making people abandon logic. - Amanda Baxter, 1998


Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity


God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. - Robert G. Ingersoll


I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. - Frederick Douglass, escaped slave


[A]ll deities reside in the human breast. - William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"


Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! - Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger


The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine? - Judith Hayes


Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought; Christianity wants the opposite. - Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Les Cahiers


On passing a revivalist tabernacle — The call of Christ requires no neon sign. - Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion. - Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays


Most people's religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe. - Luther Burbank, Why I Am an Infidel


No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. - George Bernard Shaw


Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure. - Fred Allen


It is the position of some theists that their right to freedom of religion is abridged when they are not allowed to violate the rationalists' right to freedom from religion. - James T. Green


A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root. - Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays


Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior? - James Donovan


Faith is never identical with piety. - Karl Barth


I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said 'Stop! don't do it!' 'Why shouldn't I?' he said. I said, 'Well, there's so much to live for!' He said, 'Like what?' I said, 'Well...are you religious or atheist?' He said, 'Religious.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?' He said, 'Christian.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?' He said, 'Protestant.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?' He said, 'Baptist!' I said, 'Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist church of god or Baptist church of the lord?' He said, 'Baptist church of god!' I said, 'Me too! Are you original Baptist church of god, or are you reformed Baptist church of god?' He said, 'Reformed Baptist church of god!' I said, 'Me too! Are you reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?' He said, 'Reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!' I said, 'Die, heretic scum,' and pushed him off. - Emo Phillips


The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is 'Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.' It does not mean 'Beat the shit out of your child or he will become rotten' as many fundamentalist parents seem to believe. - Author Unknown


Most reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass when God sent a current of Commonsense through the Universe. - Elbert Hubbard


The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action. - Albert Einstein


Everyday people are straying away from the church and going back to God. - Lennie Bruce, The Essential Lennie Bruce, 1972


Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H.L. Mencken


The Virgin Mary was an unwed teenage mother. - Author Unknown


The Christian Right is neither. - Author Unknown


It will be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible. - George W. Foote


[Creation science is] an attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. - Ron Peterson


"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. - James Morrow


Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance. - John F. Schumaker, Corruption of Reality, Unified Theory of Religion, Hypnosis and Psychotherapy


We are punished by our sins, not for them. - Elbert Hubbard


It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui. - Helen Keller


As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools. - Author Unknown


Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. - Agnes Repplier, Points of View


It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. - G.K. Chesterton