Home / Topics / Function Quotes

Function Quotes

Browse 2701 quotes about Function.

Function Quotes

“A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged, or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically.”

Source: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks this Meaning of Script

“In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.”

World Reason Purpose Religion Causes Function No Reason

Book:Consciousness Explained

Source: Consciousness Explained

“Whores perform the same function as priests, but far more thoroughly.”

Religion Function Priests

Author:Robert A. Heinlein

“In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.”

Form Religion Causes Function Rewards Stupidity Questioning Empiricism Gullibility

Author:Wendy Kaminer

“Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane.”

Art Form Religion Produce Grew Worship Function Sacred Drinking Excuse Occasions Tea Purity Host Guests Mundane Refinement Beverages

Book:The Book of Tea: Classic Edition

Source: The Book of Tea: Classic Edition

“The religions of the world are luminous in their individuality, and they have valuable social and soulmaking functions. Surely someday we will quit killing each other over their different strategies.”

World Different Religion Social Religious Function Strategy Killing Individuality Valuable Quitting Someday Luminous Killing Each Other

Book:The Essential Rumi - reissue: New Expanded Edition

Source: The Essential Rumi - reissue: New Expanded Edition

“That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.”

May Doe Past Religion Possibility Building Civilization Function Impediments

Book:Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

Religion Modern Argument Function Advertising Substitutes Advertisements Adverts Advertisement Negative

Book:The Works of George Santayana

Source: The Works of George Santayana

“Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”

Men Religion Fear Atheism Serious Speech Function Oppression Injury Justify Witch Free Speech Irrational Bondage Assembly Free Man Irrational Fear

Author:Louis D. Brandeis

“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

“The civil Government, though bereft of every thing like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.”