R Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with R. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.”
“Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made.”
Source: Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume
“Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries.”
“Religion has the power to destroy people.....faith the power to restore...”
Source: Daniela Domenica and the Guarneri di Gesù
“Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”
Source: My Door Is Always Open: A Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change
“Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.”
Source: The Gift
“Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.”
“Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Religion has what is EASILY the greatest bullshit story of all time.”
“Religion helps humanity to pass through its darkest times.”
Source: In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
“Religion helps you relate with the universe. Buddha was indifferent to the concept of god yet he gave us values.”
“Religion hides many mischiefs from suspicion.”
Source: Christopher Marlowe: Four Plays: Tamburlaine, Parts One and Two, The Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus
“Religion hinges upon faith, politics hinges upon who can tell the most convincing lies or maybe just shout the loudest, but science hinges upon whether its conclusions resembe what actually happens.”
Source: Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind
“Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil.”
Source: Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold
“Religion holds the solution to all problems of human relationship, whether they are between parents and children or nation and nation. Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.”
“Religion humanizes this universe, makes us feel important and loved. We are not animals governed by uncontrollable drives, animals that die for no apparent reason, but creatures made in the image of supreme being”
“Religion: I believe in life after death.
Me: I believe in life before death.
Your focus will determine your actions.”
“Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.”
Source: Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin; Written by Himself: With His Most Interesting Essays, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings, Familiar, Moral, Political, Economical, and Philosophical
“Religion I have defined as "Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art".”
“Religion, ideology, resources, land, spite, love or just because… No matter how pathetic the reason, it’s enough to start war. War will never cease to exist… reasons can be thought up after the fact… Human nature pursues strife.”
“Religion idolizes concepts and avoids personal experience.”
Source: When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles
“Religion implies revelation.”
“Religion imprisons God. By its own accord, if we are made in the image and likeness of God, then His condemnation of the sinner is an act of hypocrisy. I believe God to be greater than that.”
“Religion in a magistrate strengthens his authority, because it procures veneration, and gains a reputation to it. In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is in reality so much power.”
“Religion in America . . . Must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions for that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it . . . I do know know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion - for who can search the human heart? - But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”
“Religion in India culminates in freedom.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Religion in India must be made as free and as easy of access as is God's air.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.”
Source: The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion
“Religion in its true sense is the most joyous thing the human soul can know, and when the real religion is realized, we will find it to be an agent of peace, of joy, and of happiness, and never an agent of gloomy, long-faced sadness.”
Source: In Tune with the Infinite
“Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith ; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.”
Source: The Notebooks of Simone Weil
“Religion in the public square is becoming an endangered species.”
“Religion in (the US) is so focused on fighting science and these compelling atheist voices that your preachers have lost track of what religion is really about. In... - the Eastern Church - and in Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, religion isn't there to offer theories or explanation. We accept that the divine is unknowable.....for a lot of rational people..., it's become a choice. Fact or faith. Science or religion....You shouldn't have to choose.”
Source: The Sign
“Religion in the West has a very wrong connotation. It has almost reached to a point where the very word 'religion' creates a repulsion, where the very word 'religion' reminds one of dead churches and dead priests. It reminds one of serious looking people, long faces. It has lost the capacity to dance, to sing, to celebrate. And when a religion has lost the capacity to dance, to celebrate, to sing, to love, just to be, then it is no more religion - it is a corpse, it is theology. Theology is dead religion.”
“Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.”
“Religion indeed enlightens, terrifies, subdues; it gives faith, it inflicts remorse, it inspires resolutions, it draws tears, it inflames devotion, but only for the occasion.”
Source: Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education: Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin
“Religion informs us that misery and sin were produced together. The depravation of human will was followed by a disorder of the harmony of nature; and by that Providence which often places antidotes in the neighborhood of poisons, vice was checked by misery, lest it should swell to universal and unlimited dominion.”
Source: Life and Writings
“Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."”
“Religion is 'twixt God and my own soul, Nor saint, nor sage, can boundless thought control.”
Source: The gleaner
“Religion is (a) a pre-scientific system of explanation and technology; (b) a source of meaning, direction and emotional expression in life; (c) a means of social control; (d) a means of coping with uncertainty and death.”
“Religion is ... being as much like God as man can be.”
Source: Moral and religious aphorisms [collected by J. Jeffery from the papers of B. Whichcote]. Now re-publ., with additions, by S. Salter. To which are added, Eight letters: which passed between dr. Whichcote, and dr. Tuckney
“Religion is ... the most pernicious single influence in human society, without one redeeming feature.”
“Religion is a barbarous obsidian knife poised over our chests put it in a cabinet and admire it as a work of art, but don't ever wield the damned thing ever again.”
“Religion is a belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. It therefore has no reality check. And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality… and extreme, grotesque immorality.”
“Religion is a belief in supernatural entities or forces that have an effect on the natural world - A belief in forces that are invisible, intangible, inaudible and otherwise undetectable by any natural means.”
“Religion is a belief or a curriculum. It can't hurt people or start wars. People hurt people, and people start wars. The real problem is the narcissist, for he can't control his anger and believes no one else is entitled to their own opinion or beliefs .”
“Religion is a belief with a set of rules, regulations, and rituals created by someone with his thoughts, imaginations, experiences, and wisdom. Most religions bring about positive changes for society. Spirituality is a perception of inner truth, inner beauty, and inner reality. Spirituality involves trusting your own experiences.”
“Religion is a bell jar; you cannot find God in that jar, because it is your bell jar, you have created it! Break the glass prison and get fresh air, elevate your intelligence! Wake up and open your eyes; see the truth beyond your prison! If you can't break the glass, don't worry; science will do it for you!”
“Religion is a bludgeon in the hand of the oppressor to suppress the oppressed”
“Religion is a bridge to the spiritual, but the spiritual lies beyond religion.”
“Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?”