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Religion Quotes

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Religion Quotes

“The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.”

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Book:Poor Richard's Almanack: Being the Choicest Morsels of Wisdom, Written During the Years of the Almanack's Publication
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“Many people conceive of religion as something apart from everyday affairs of the world. They think of it in terms of ceremony or ritual or sermons and often it strikes them as being dull or not particularly interesting. Religion may be described in many ways. I like to think of it as a medicine, a healing medicine for the mind.”

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Book:Faith is the Answer: A Pastor and a Psychiatrist Discuss Your Problems
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“Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.”

WayGodTruthReligionPeaceCreationObjectsPracticalsHypocrisyNonsenseServingPreachingServing GodAgnosticDoing Good
Book:Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
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“An idea is growing in foreign policy circles in Washington ... that there is no turning back. We are stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan for 25 to 40 years, we are embedded in our prideful unilateralism, and nothing can return us to more traditional American values and principles of action. The hubristic creators of this "inevitability" planned it this way. ... Their failures in Iraq have not stopped the fanatic, power-hungry neoconservatives. ... The hard-liners who dominate this administration ... have led us to eternal conflict with Muslims.”

WayYearsIdeasWarHardActionReligionValuesPrinciplesPowerGrowingPolicyReturnConflictEternalIraqCreatorCirclesStuckHungryTraditionalAdministrationAfghanistanForeign PolicyFanaticsEmbeddedInevitabilityAmerican ValuesNo Turning BackPower HungryUnilateralism
Author:Georgie Anne Geyer
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“There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available.”

MenWayMindHumansTwoReasonRealityTruthReligionPrinciplesKnowledgeLearningEventsBehaviorThirdsAvailableMysteriousOperationsOutcomesInterpretationHuman MindCategoriesExperimentationCausality
Author:Ludwig von Mises
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“There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who bears no similarity to humans either in shape or thought... but humans believe that the gods are born like themselves, and that the gods wear clothes and have bodies like humans and speak in the same way... but if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with the hands and manufacture the things humans can make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and they would make the gods' bodies resemble those which each kind of animal had itself.”

IfsMenWayBelieveHumansKindBodyHandsFormReligionSpeakBornAnimalBearsMoralityShapesClothesDrawsHorseLionsCowsSimilarity
Author:Xenophanes
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“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.”

PeopleWayDoneReligionViewsAtheismProveEssentialsAuthorityMajorsFunctionPrejudicePoint Of ViewAppropriateIngredientsFearfulInsecureDefiningOutletsFundamentalistFundamentalist Religion
Book:Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks this Meaning of Script
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“Christianity has ever been the enemy of human love; it has forever cursed and expelled and crucified the one passion which sweetens and smiles on human life, which makes the desert blossom as the rose, and which glorifies the common things and common ways of earth. It made of this, the angel of life, a shape of sin and darkness ... Even in the unions which it reluctantly permitted, it degraded and dwarfed the passion which it could not entirely exclude, and permitted it coarsely to exist for the mere necessity of procreation.”

WayHumansMadeEarthReligionPassionSinCommonChristianityEnemyDarknessForeverShapesAngelUnionsRoseMereDesertHuman LifeCursedGlorifyHuman LoveProcreationCommon Things
Book:Views and Opinions
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“Pity! Religion has so seldom found A skilful guide into poetic ground! The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray And every muse attend her in her way.”

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Book:The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper: With Life, and Critical Notice of His Writings. Eight Engravings on Steel
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“Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as when a radioactive atom decays at a random time. Even the quantum vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations. In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in the quantum realm this holds only on average. Energy fluctuations out of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles. An uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great leap of the imagination.”

WorldWayUsedReligionEnergyCausesImaginationSeaEventsHappeningsAverageRealmsEmptinessPairsLeapAtomsVoidDecayQuantumConservationParticlesVacuumsTransientBoilingShort LivedFluctuationEnergy ConservationSpacetime
Author:Taner Edis
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“Biblical higher criticism is preserved in the particular enclave of academic Christian scholarship and is thought to be too unfruitful to share with the average pew-sitter, for it raises more questions than the church can adequately answer. So the leaders of the church would protect the simple believers from concepts they were not trained to understand. In this way that ever-widening gap between academic Christians and the average pew-sitter made its first appearance.”

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Author:John Shelby Spong
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“How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?....The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore.”

PeopleThinkingWayBelievePersonsReasonEarthReligionFightingReligiousLonelinessAcceptanceLonelyArtificialCreedsArbitraryCongregationMembershipFleeingExtended Family
Book:Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
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“One form of religion perpetually gives way to another; if religion did not change it would be dead. ... Each time the new ideas appear they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth; but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone.”

IfsWayGivingFirstsIdeasEndsWould BeEarthFormReligionGonePrejudiceAncientDeeperInsightFollyNew IdeasThreateningFoeBetter Life
Book:The Greek Way
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“Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.”

WayIdeasHandsReligionValuesOrganizationRegardDown AndStructureRidiculousBrandsPermanentHeritageMechanismAdmirableSystematic
Author:Susan Jacoby
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“Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.”

WorldWayGivingMayIdeasGodSeemsEarthLyingReligionHeavenKnownLordThis WorldThousandOther WorldsInfidel
Book:Pierre; or The Ambiguities
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“In a way, being a Mormon prepares you to deal with science fiction, because we live simultaneously in two very different cultures. The result is that we all know what it's like to be strangers in a strange land. It's not just a coincidence that there are so many effective Mormon science fiction writers. We don't regard being an alien as an alien experience. But it also means that we're not surprised when people don't understand what we're saying or what we think.”

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Author:Orson Scott Card
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“Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained--in success--and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man's highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.”

MenWayMayMeanEndsFactsPoliticalReligionPoliticsGoalReligiousHighestRemainsHistoricalMortalsAttainmentEnds And Means
Book:Pointing the way: collected essays. Edited and translated with an introd. by Maurice S. Friedman
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“Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not 'Islamic.' No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria's civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”

PeopleWayHas BeensTwoWarStatesRealityGovernmentReligionPoliticsSidesCommunityLeadershipSimpleVisionClassTakenClearViolenceGenerationsPolicyPureEthicsGainsAdvantageOrganizationVictimMajorityStrategyUnityKillingHuman RightsIraqTerrorismTerroristIdeologyBordersCivil WarTwo ThingsIslamicAlsTerritoryForeign PolicySyriaStrifeBoth SidesSlaughterAl QaedaIsilIslamic TerrorismTaken Advantage
Author:Barack Obama
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“Finding God in all things is not an 'empirical eureka.' When we desire to encounter God, we would like to verify him immediately by an empirical method. But you cannot meet God this way...A contemplative attitude is necessary: it is the feeling that you are moving along the good path of understanding and affection toward things and situations. Profound peace, spiritual consolation, love of God, and love of all things in God-this is the sign that you are on this right path.”

WayFeelingsWisdomSpiritualMovingDesireReligionUnderstandingAttitudeSituationPathHuman NatureFindingsAll ThingsAnd LoveMethodProfoundAffectionGod LoveEncountersConsolationRight PathContemplativeVerifyGod And LoveFinding God
Author:Pope Francis
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“I am so far from thinking the maxims of Confucius and Jesus Christ to differ, that I think the plain and simple maxims of the former, will help to illustrate the more obscure ones of the latter, accommodated to the then way of speaking.”

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Book:Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature. |. ...
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“It's always been you know, religion that has been the primary impediment to actual relationship with God, because it creates a mythology about performance -- that you can perform your way into the appeasement of the deity. And you know, when you're born inside the cultural framework that I was, and you're born inside the religious traditions that I was, that becomes your understanding of spirituality: That it's about trying to please God. So, it's really not about God at all; it's about our ability to perform according to whatever the expectations are.”

KnowsWayTryingHas BeensReligionSpiritualityUnderstandingBornReligiousAbilityPleaseExpectationsTraditionPerformancesMythologyPrimariesDeitiesFrameworkRelationship With GodImpedimentsReligious TraditionsAppeasement
Author:William P. Young
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“Religions contradict one another-on small matters, such as whether we should put on a hat or take one off on entering a house of worship, or whether we should eat beef and eschew pork or the other way around, all the way to the most central issues, such as whether there are no gods, one God, or many gods.”

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Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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“If you're following the news, you know that the major religions differ in their interpretation of the holy books. For example, one way to interpret God's will is that you should love your neighbor. An alternate reading of the holy books might lead you to rig a donkey cart with small mortar rockets and aim it at a hotel full of infidels. In summary, po-tay-to, poh-tah-to. Religions are very flexible.”

IfsKnowsWayShouldBookMightReligionReadingLove YouExampleHolyMajorsNewsAimFollowingNeighborGods WillOne WayHotelInterpretationFlexibleRocketsCartsDonkeyInfidelSummaryMortarHoly BooksLove Your NeighborRigs
Author:Scott Adams
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