R Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with R. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Religions get lost as people do.”
Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks
“Religions have a special responsibility to encourage and inspire people to love planet earth, which as far as we know, is the only place in the cosmos that works in such a harmonious way that it can support intelligent life.”
“Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs.”
“Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.”
“Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.”
Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Religions have become a hindrance, rather than a help, to our shared pursuit of peace and progress. They tend to make us meaner rather than better human beings, less sensitive to the demands of justice, compassion and fellow humanity in our times.”
“Religions have been universal in the sense that all the people we know anything about have had a religion. But the differences among them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless.... The older apologists for Christianity seem to have been better advised than some modern ones in condemning every religion but one as an impostor, as at bottom some kind of demon worship or at any rate a superstitious figment.”
Source: The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy
“Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.”
“Religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times”
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
“Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person.”
“Religions have held back the development of consciousness in civilizations throughout history. Thus, over time, humanity has been condemned to follow the rules of a game that has only benefited governmental, financial, political and religious systems. However, the new generations are breaking with this gap, freeing themselves from the chains and shackles inherited from their ancestors. In short, they are waking up and opening their eyes to take the reins of the new millennium. It will not be an easy task, as the ancient group still submits to non-human governments that decide the future of our civilization. No one can predict what will happen. But believe me when I say that this is only the beginning and that, without suffering, there will be no reward... ever!" From the book The Devil's Writer (A Novel for God).”
Source: THE LORD OF TALES: The masterpiece of deceit
“Religions have provided comfort, community, and moral guidance to countless people, and some biologists argue that a sophisticated deism, toward which many religions are evolving, can be made compatible with an evolutionary understanding of the mind and human nature.”
Source: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
“RELIGIONS, IDEOLOGIES, POLITICS AND GREED CAN ALL UNDERMINE OUR
UNITY.
AND ONLY ONE THING CAN KEEP US ALL TOGETHER:
HUMANITY”
“Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.”
“Religions, including science, are still so immature. They did not find the location of the soul. Most of them are still in doubt.”
“Religions lead us to believe that the soul is the ultimate family jewel and that in return for our mindless obedience, they can secure it for us in their vaults, or at least insure it against fire and theft. They are mistaken.”
“Religions mistakenly consider advise/warnings from books of wisdom to be commandments, there are no commandments, no one has ever been commanded by Creation. However, there is Love. If I saw you walking towards a cliff that you did not know was there, would it be wrong of me, in pure LOVE, to warn you?
ALL of the books of wisdom are simply that and are meant for us to take from them what we understand, can use, and leave the rest, they are meant to be revisited many times. If I gave you the gift of a warm blanket during the hot summer months, the pure Joy of the gift could not be realized until the winter came. Wisdom is like that, sometimes it is looked at in the summer and so we only find the summer parts useful, but if we revisit wisdom in the winter, we'll pick up many things that were left behind on our previous visit.
Religion is a tool that can help one begin Spiritual discipline. Unfortunately many begin to think of the tool of religion as their God. Like any tool, once it is no longer useful, it must be set down in order to free the hand for picking up the next useful tool. Religion as a tool is useful until it isn't. Religion as a God is a cruel and destructive thing that brings much despair.”
“Religions of hope and love are a luxury of security and order; the need for striking fear into a subject or rebellious people made most primitive religions cults of mystery and dread.”
Source: Our Oriental Heritage
“Religions often partake of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future.”
Source: DUNE
“Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself.”
“Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.”
“Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.”
Source: Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness
“Religions take donations and don't pay taxes.”
“Religions talked of angels, of interstitial beings between the mortal and divine. They cast them in a comely light, creatures that exuded compassion.
That was not what angels were. These were horrors: millions of eyes, shining wings, a light that dimmed the sun.”
Source: The Lifecycle of Suns
“Religions teach of a deep and fundamental unity on planet Earth. Interestingly, consistent with Darwin, the world’s dominant religions teach people that there is much more continuity than separation across species.”
Source: Animals and World Religions
“Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune.”
“Religions that began worshipping a single male ‘God’ were an Archontic construct holographically inserted into history in order to separate humanity from its spiritual roots in the earth.”
Source: Cali the Destroyer
“Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.”
Source: Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68
“Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all.”
“Religions were able to contest the most Nobel side of humanity and overshadow the essence of human dignity, all by creating distinctive yet superficial sectarian barriers that kept humans in a viscous relentless cycle of self-destructive behaviour.”
Source: Honourable Defection
“Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.”
Source: Marriage and Morals
“Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate.”
Source: Bulletin
“Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest.... But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.”
“Religions, themselves, are (intellectual) blasphemies.”
“Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.”
“Religiositeit lijkt me soms een natuurtoestand, slordig verborgen onder het agnostisch oppervlak, dat aangeleerd en broos is.”
Source: Dit is mijn moeder
“Religiosity complete culture and civilization .civilization not just go around a table together. No civilized person sit behind the desk just. Society and the individual should be the size of such decorations and scenery. There is a sense and knowledge ,wisdom and wise that is completed that requires valuable and pricing that is religion and faith and chivalry. This is why Islamic civilization and culture extensions of religion, chivalry, freedom that complete of every culture and civilization”
“Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring." (including art, cathedrals, cities, earthworks, etc?)”
“Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.”
Source: Who are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity
“Religiosity that is hostile to sex is the product of authoritarian society.”
Source: The Mass Psychology of Fascism
“Religiosity turns out to be the best indicator of civic involvement: it's more accurate than education, age, income, gender or race.”
“religiosos constantemente nos acusar de sermos arrogantes, os cientistas e ateus, eles são realmente arrogante: pensar que eles já tinha as respostas a tudo há 2000 anos atrás, o que nos levou séculos para desenvolver cuidadosamente, um exército de pensadores. O criacionismo sozinho requer pelo menos quatro teorias científicas grandes (Big Bang, Teoria da Evolução, Estatística, e Genética), sem contar as menores que formam as grandes, ou todo o trabalho para comprovar e testar cada detalhe das grandes, cada detalhe, por menor que seja, precisamos testar extensivamente, e continuamente. A ciência não tem nenhuma teoria tão arrogante quanto o criacionismo.”
Source: Seria a Bíblia um livro científico?: Por que a Bíblia Sagrada não deve ser levada a sério e como argumentar contra ela (Estudos Bíblicos para ateus 2)
“Religious adepts tend to extend their compassion beyond their species. Perhaps more important, when anymal- and earth-friendly teachings are taken seriously, sacred traditions favor (or overtly require) a plant-based diet. In short, religious traditions understand that compassion, a core religious value, requires religious adherents to modify their behavior accordingly, and at a minimum, this means that human beings must avoid purchasing or consuming anymal products from contemporary anymal industries.”
Source: Animals and World Religions
“Religious Americans donate more and volunteer more time to charitable institutions than do secular Americans.”
Source: Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph
“Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.”
Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
“Religious and social tradition has been replaced with current fad and the opinion that the past isn’t needed. We have become a people from nowhere in particular and disconnected from each other. In gathering the past, we remember ourselves and can forgive the members of our history for their shortfalls.”
“Religious and spiritual leaders should be held accountable for environmental activism, not only because they have access to large communities and can influence votes but because service is integral to religious and spiritual life.”
“Religious apologists complain bitterly that atheists and secularists are aggressive and hostile in their criticism of them. I always say: look, when you guys were in charge, you didn't argue with us, you just burnt us at the stake. Now what we're doing is, we're presenting you with some arguments and some challenging questions, and you complain.”
“Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.”
Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.”