RELIGION QUOTES Quicklyfind - Quotes on just about anything!
For Religion or Religious Traditions Religion is mass spirituality. You have to agree with everyone. - unknown A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. — Francis Bacon A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or, he may be in Church and be aware of God; but, if he is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in all things and places, and is willing to give Himself everywhere so far as lies in Him. He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere. — Meister Eckhart All is inherent within us. Like Jesus said, "The Kingdom is Within." — Eden Ahbez All that we refrain from and all that we do, let us not do or refrain from merely because it seems to the multitude somehow honorable or base, but because it is forbidden by reason and the god within us. — Marcus Aurelius All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one God who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason. — Marcus Aurelius Atheism leads not to badness, but only to an incurable sadness and lonliness. - William Pepperell Montague Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. — '"First Epistle of John", Holy Bible (King James Version) Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. - Albert Einstein Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me . . . That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave. — Stonewall Jackson Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God. — Ludwig Wittgenstein Creation is too grand, too glorious, too complex and too mysterious to be captured in any narrow creed or reflected in any single metaphor. It is exactly because we so cherish the world in all its multi-hued grandeur that we resist the temptation to see it through only one lens. Our conviction is that we will come a little closer to the truth about the world - and certainly be more receptive to its splendour - if we set a variety of vehicles to apprehend it. - William F. Schultz Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, 'the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest'. — Helen Keller Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion —human religion— but any number of faiths. — Mahatma Gandhi Even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways. — Black Elk For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love. — John Donne Freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth. — Mahatma Gandhi God created Arrakis to train the faithful. — Frank Herbert (in Dune) He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ. — Thomas Jefferson Hinduism as I know it entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being … When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita, and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full of tragedies and if they have not left any visible and indelible effect on me, I owe it to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. — Mahatma Gandhi I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.— Thomas Paine I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God's world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers. These are the articles of my faith, and there is yet another on which all depends— to bear this faith above every tempest which overfloods it, and to make it a principal in disaster and through affliction. Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit and of God pronouncing His works good. — Helen Keller I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. — Thomas Jefferson I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given. — Emily Dickinson I saw my Lord with the Eye of my heart, And I said: Truly there is no doubt that it is You. It is You that I see in everything; And I do not see You through anything (but You). — Al-Hallaj I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven: in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come. In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God. — Julian of Norwich I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name. . . — Walt Whitman (in Leaves of Grass) In my religion there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry and doubt. — Cyril Connolly The Unquiet Grave (1945) Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests… —Jim Morrison Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensations which tells you this is something you've always known.— Frank Herbert (in Dune) My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. — Ralph Waldo Emerson My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. — Mahatma Gandhi My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. - Albert Einstein No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere : I see Heaven's glories shine, And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear. — Emily Brontë O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art & perfect our lives. — Jim Morrison Once you accept the existence of God —however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things. — Morris West Our times are in his hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" — Robert Browning Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. — James 1:27 Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Religion it self is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better. — William Penn Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life. - William James resident mockery give us an hour for magic — Jim Morrison Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. - Albert Einstein That friend of mine who lives in God, That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. — G. K. Chesterton The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research. — Albert Einstein The Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. — Jesus Christ The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects. — Ralph Waldo Emerson The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. — Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) The whole duty of humanity, from a Christian perspective is: "To know God and to show God" - James Patterson There is surely a piece of divinity within us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. — Thomas Browne Though earth and moon were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee. — Emily Brontë To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning. — Ludwig Wittgenstein Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell. — John Adams (The italicized quotation within this statement has OFTEN been quoted out of context.) We have now learned from our generalizations of the great complexity of the interactions of principles. . . that what is approached is eternal and instant awareness of absolute reality of all that ever existed. All the great metaphysical integrity of all the individuals, which is potential and inherent in the complex interactions of generalized principles, will always and only coexist eternally. —Buckminster Fuller We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them. — General Robert E. Lee What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. — Ludwig Wittgenstein With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan —to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. — Abraham Lincoln Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven. — Jesus Christ You and I didn't design people. God designed people. What I am trying to do is to discover why God included humans in Universe. —Buckminster Fuller Moderative Comments about Religion or Religious Traditions "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own. — Richard Francis Burton All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. — Principia Discordia "America has freedom of religion, although I'm not sure which religion is free." - Anonymous "Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power." - Joseph M. McCabe Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything just give him time to rationalize it. Forgive me for being blunt. — Robert Heinlein (in ) "Any religion that teaches there is only heaven or hell is gonna be a haven for manic-depressives." Source: E.T.B. "Call on God, but row away from the rocks." - First Nations proverb Difference of opinion is helpful in religion. — Thomas Jefferson "How absurd to try and make two men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot make two timepieces agree! - Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor "Faith: The opposite of dogmatism." - John Ralston Saul Source: The Doubter's Companion - "Faith" "Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!" - George Bernard Shaw "I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time." - Friedrich Nietzsche "I can’t talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes." - George Bernard Shaw "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei "I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth." - Lin Yutang I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged. — Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Mrs. H. Harrison Smith (1816) "I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending." - Isaac Asimov If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. — Spider Robinson "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." - Robert H. Jackson In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson "...instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey...." - Lin Yutang It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read. — Thomas Jefferson "It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out our uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight." - Rudyard Kipling It were better to be of no Church, than to be bitter for any.— William Penn It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it. — William Penn "Just what God needs -one more victim. Why do we crucify ourselves?" - Tori Amos Source: Crucify "Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled." - Pierre Trudeau "Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." - Butch Hancock Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in your reading have been like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul. — Ralph Waldo Emerson "Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." - P.J. O'Rourke Man is the 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 "Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion." — George Santayana "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." - H. G. Wells "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt to people we personally dislike." - Oscar Wilde "On the surface, [holy scriptures] may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been concieved as myths: poetic readings of the mysteries of life from a certain interested point of view. But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is - to say the least - to miss the point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt." - Joseph Campbell Source: Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God "One's religion is whatever he is most interested in." - J. M. Barrie The Twelve-Pound Look (1910) "People are divided into two groups - the righteous and the unrighteous - and the righteous do the dividing." - Lord Cohen "Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both." — William Hazlitt Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others. — William O. Douglas: opinion, United States v. Ballard, 1944 "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." - Napoleon Bonaparte "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." - Karl Marx So many gods, so many creeds; So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox "Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself." - Lin Yutang That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore. But that he might conscientiously believe himself inspired from above, is very possible... — Thomas Jefferson "That religion which regards the recognition of human dignity as a sin, is not a religion but a disease." - Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. — Ralph Waldo Emerson "The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men’s minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them." — George Santayana "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." - President John Adams Source: Treaty of Tripoli, 1796 "The hypocrites...love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men." Source: Matthew, 6:5 The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals. Strength enters just as much as the moral element prevails. — Ralph Waldo Emerson The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. — Ralph Waldo Emerson The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter... But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors. — Thomas Jefferson "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." - Isaac Asimov Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main… — Emily Brontë We are not engaged in a complicated joke disguised as a religion. We are engaged in a religion disguised as a complicated joke. — Principia Discordia "We Christians neither want nor worship crosses as the pagans do." - Minucius Felix (Christian author, circa 200 A.D.) "We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition." - Cicero We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do. We do not want that. We may quarrel with men about things on earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit.— Chief Joseph We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. — Jonathan Swift Against Religion or Religious Traditions "A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin." - Ambrose Bierce "A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable." - H. L. Mencken "At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is infinitely apparent and demonstrated a thousand times over, that in destroying one, the other must be undermined, for the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second." - The Marquis de Sade "Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor." - H. L. Mencken "Christianity has a built-in defense system; anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It is a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it, and believe me I was raised Southern Baptist, is to take heroic doses of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, 'Show me.'" - Bill Hicks "Christianity is merely paganism with a more successful advertising campaign." - Skip Church "Christians are generally creepy people as a direct result of the dysfunctional dynamic of worshipping a dead naked hippie." Source: Engine Tour Shirt, 1995 - "Die Warzau" "Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh." - H. L. Mencken "Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a roaring lion." Source: The Sword of the Lord, actual author not known. "Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." - H. L. Mencken "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken "For cats and witches are hard to kill;They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die -Books said they did , but they lie!" - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr "Fundamentalism means never having to say 'I'm wrong.'" - Anonymous "God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That, sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, 'Do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out.' When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When a god says the same we call him loving and build churches in his honor." - William C. Easttom II "Going to Church doesn't make a man Christian any more than going to a garage makes him an automobile." - Billy Sunday "Heaven: The Coney Island of the Christian imagination." - Elbert Hubbard "I don't care what the priests say. I think we should do as we feel." - Benny Source: Circle of Friends "I don't mind born-agains being born again, but why do they always have to come back as themselves?!" - Robin Tyler "I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships and sentiments unsoured by animosities." - Ambrose Bierce "I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" - George Bernard Shaw Source: The Devil's Disciple "If Christ was executed today I bet Christians would wear little electric chairs around their necks." - Dick Gregory "If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle." - Dave Barry Source: 25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years "Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable." - H. L. Mencken "Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity." - Ambrose Bierce "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." - Friedrich Nietzsche "Isn't it ironic that Christians keep repeating, 'Civilization will fail without Christianity' on computers built by Buddhists in Japan?" - Anonymous "It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money." - H. L. Mencken "It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities." - H. L. Mencken "Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant." - Edward Gibbon "Notre Père qui êtes aux cieuxRestez-yEt nous, nous resterons sur la terre." - Jacques Prvert Translation: "Our father which art in Heaven,Stay there,And we shall stay on Earth." Source: Pater noster "On June 22nd, [1633,] in the morning, in the great hall of the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Galileo was found guilty of holding a false doctrine. He went down on his knees and both abjured and condemned his own errors. He swore never to argue such doctrines again. It was thus definitely confirmed that the sun did rotate around the earth...Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Saint Mary Over Minerva. Power over wisdom." - John Ralston Saul Source: The Doubter's Companion - "Wisdom" "Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages." - Richard Lederer "One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing." - H. L. Mencken "Orthodox Christian theology teaches that Jesus had to die before God could forgive sins and send people to heaven. If that's true, then why isn't there a 'Saint Judas?'" - Skip Church "'Pagh wraiths, Prophets--all this talk of gods strikes me as nothing more than superstitious nonsense.''You believe the Founders are gods, don't you?''That's different.''In what way?''The Founders are gods.'" Source: Weyoun and Damar, "Tears of the Prophets" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." - H. L. Mencken Religion is the last frontier of men beaten in life. - Anonymous (Posted boldly by an Anonymous Coward, above all else, Dec 15, 2003) "Religions die when they are proven to be true. Science is the record of dead religions." - Oscar Wilde Source: Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young "Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them." - H. L. Mencken "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." - Bertrand Russell "Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents." - H. L. Mencken "Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell." - H. L. Mencken "The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked..." - H. L. Mencken "The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails." - H. L. Mencken "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." - Friedrich Nietzsche "The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight." - Terry Pratchett, Eric "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists -- that is why they invented hell." - Bertrand Russell "The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil." - H. L. Mencken "Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." - H. L. Mencken "'There's a Bajoran convention on the station I didn't know about? Thanks, Odo. I need to call in more dabo girls.''It's not a convention. They're from an orthodox spiritual order coming to support Vedek Winn's efforts to keep the Bajoran children out of school.''Orthodox? In that case I'll need twice as many dabo girls.'" Source: Quark and Odo, "In the Hands of the Prophets" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'') "Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience." - Adam Smith "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." - H. L. Mencken "'Well,' she said finally, 'what would Jesus do?' My mind hit a brick wall and slid down it. No one I considered entirely sane had ever said something like that to me before." - Elizabeth Nickson "Whenever I forgive someone it's relatively easy. But for God, it takes a bloody miracle." - Skip Church "Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers." - H. L. Mencken "The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs." - Bill Maher