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Religion Quotes

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Religion Quotes

“The command, 'Be fruitful and multiply', was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two persons.”

World Persons Two Religion Authority Population Command Save Mother Earth

Author:William Ralph Inge

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

“How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”

People Men States God Religion Order Stuff Differences Church Common Dying Quiet Authority Hunger Ill Excellent One Man

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte

“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 its permission to man to render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it continued the cruelty of the barbarian and the pagan, and endowed these with what appeared a divine authority.”

Men Earth Religion Subjects Divine Creatures Authority Cruelty Permission Pagan Barbarians Living Creatures Creatures Of The Earth

Book:Views and Opinions

Source: Views and Opinions

“To have religion upon authority, and not upon conviction, is like a finger-watch, to be set forwards or backwards, as he pleases that has it in keeping.”

Religion Watches Please Authority Fingers Conviction Backwards

Book:Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims

Source: Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims

“Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society-whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.”

Source: English Secularism: A Confession of Belief

“There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.”

Reason Philosophy Religion Theory Authority Doctrine Submission

Book:The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

“The nice thing about citing god as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove.”

Religion Nice Prove Authority Nice Things Citing

Book:Revolt in 2100

Source: Revolt in 2100

“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.”

World Reality Religion This World Authority Gains Affair Reputation Magistrates Veneration

Author:John Tillotson

“[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.”

Religion Natural Rights Authority Conscience Submit Natural Rights Legitimate Power

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“For if I should not believe all that is written by Historians, of the glorious acts of Alexander, or Caesar; I do not think the Ghost of Alexander, or Caesar, had any just cause to be offended; or any body else, but the Historian. If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak, and we believe it not; we distrust not God therein, but Livy. So that it is evident, that whatsoever we believe, upon no other reason, then what is drawn from authority of men only, and their writings; whether they be sent from God or not, is Faith in men only.”

Source: Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition

“The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.”

Soul Religion Authority Decline Reliance Withdrawal

Book:Self-reliance, and Other Essays

Source: Self-reliance, and Other Essays

“The history of mankind is a history of the subjugation and exploitation of a great majority of people by an elite few by what has been appropriately termed the 'ruling class'. The ruling class has many manifestations. It can take the form of a religious orthodoxy, a monarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat, outright fascism, or, in the case of the United States, corporate statism. In each instance the ruling class relies on academics, scholars and 'experts' to legitimize and provide moral authority for its hegemony over the masses.”

“To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.”

Facts Religion Religious Morality Authority Obvious Deny Secular Sanctions Supplies

Author:Joseph Addison

“If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”