Quotessence
Home / Topics / Secularism Quotes

Secularism Quotes

Browse 399 quotes about Secularism.

Related topics

ChristianPeopleIndiaReligiousBelieveIfsWorld

Secularism Quotes

“One class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property: and property, once gained, will procure the respect due only to talents and virtue. Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors.”

WealthClassPropertyOppressionSecularismIdolatryClass Struggle
Book:A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Create image

“At some level, it is even tempting to think that since strict materialism is among the most incoherent of superstitions - one that has never really asked the question of the being of things in any depth or with any persistence, or one that has at best attempted to conjure that question away as a fallacy of grammar - it is incapable of imagining any conception of God more sophisticated than its own. The materialist encounters an instance of unjust suffering and, by a sort of magical thinking, concludes from the absence of any immediately visible moral order that there must be nothing transcendent of material causality, in much the same way that certain of our more remote, primitive ancestors might have seen a flash of lightning in the sky and concluded that some god must have flung it from on high. In neither case does the conclusion follow from the evidence (though in the latter case the reasoning is somewhat more rigorous); and in neither case is the god at issue much more than an affective myth.”

PainSufferingEvilAtheismMaterialismSecularismNatural Evil
Book:The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
Create image

“The bigger the government, the more the corruption. It's almost never mentioned, and it might be the biggest of the ten principles that I am speaking of…Do you know who has created the greatest evils of history? Big governments. Big SECULAR governments. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, all big States. Why would anybody trust the big state? It's amazing how many callers have imbued the college message that more people have been killed by religion than anything else in history. NO. More people have been killed by governments than anything else in history…….and just in the 20th century alone, and none of them were religious. You don't learn THAT in college.”

ReligionEvilSecularismPolitical Philosophy
Author:Dennis Prager
Create image

“We don't need to believe in a grand design to be good people, but we do need to be good people to create a grand design. It's neither about atheism, nor about the so-called religiousness - rather it's about plain, ordinary humanness.”

AcceptanceGoodnessToleranceAgnosticSecularismGlobal HarmonyGodlinessInterfaithPeaceful CoexistenceGrand Design
Book:Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One
Create image

“If I give you two possible worlds to choose from, in which you would like your children and grandchildren to live, which one would you choose - a world filled with hatred and discrimination, or a world where the humans care about their fellow humans beyond the petty little man-made labels of religion, race, nationality, intellect, gender etc.! We do not need to make efforts and be kind in order to keep Nature running, she can do that quite well and far better than us herself, in fact, it'd benefit Nature, if suddenly the humans were to disappear. It is us who need Nature in order to exist, not the other way around. We must stand on the side of kindness, goodness, compassion and conscience, not to keep the processes in Nature functioning, but because if we don't, the environment that we would be giving our future generations, would be no different than the violent and lethal environment of the wild. Hence, our kindness would make no difference to Nature whatsoever, rather it would simply be a selfish yet humanely necessary act on our part, that we must carry out to create a humane environment for the human species. Upon the kindness of us humans, the fate of humanity is predicated, not the fate of Nature. We are born in a world filled with hatred and discrimination, hence it is our existential responsibility as sentient and conscientious beings to contribute in the elimination of such discrimination and hatred. Kindness of ours in our daily walks of life, shall pave the path for a truly humane society for our children and grandchildren to live in.”

CompassionKindnessGoodnessHatredPrejudiceHumanismHumanitarianSecularismSectarianism
Author:Abhijit Naskar
Create image

“Secular humanists of every type may ridicule the Bible, but they cannot escape it; and in their obsession with change, calls for reform, doomsday warnings, and utopian visions, they continue to steal from it.”

BibleSecularism
Book:Loving God With All Your Mind: How to Survive and Prosper As a Christian in the Secular University and Post-Christian Culture
Create image

“I'd be willing to bet that the notion of the end of time is more common today in the secular world than in the Christian. The Christian world makes it the object of meditation, but acts as if it may be projected into a dimension not measured by calendars. The secular world pretends to ignore the end of time, but is fundamentally obsessed by it. This is not a paradox, but a repetition of what transpired in the first thousand years of history. ... I will remind readers that the idea of the end of time comes out of one of the most ambiguous passages of John's text, chapter 20... This approach, which isn't only Augustine's but also the Church Fathers' as a whole, casts History as a journey forward—a notion alien to the pagan world. Even Hegel and Marx are indebted to this fundamental idea, which Pierre Teilhard de Chardin pursued. Christianity invented History, and it is in fact a modern incarnation of the Antichrist that denounces History as a disease. It's possible that secular historicism has understood history as infinitely perfectible—so that tomorrow we improve upon today, always and without reservation... But the entire secular world is not of the ideological view that through history we understand how to look at the regression and folly of history itself. There is, nonetheless, an originally Christian view of history whenever the signpost of Hope on this road is followed. The simple knowledge of how to judge history and its horrors is fundamentally Christian, whether the speaker is Emmanuel Mounier on tragic optimism or Gramsci on pessimism of reason and optimism of will.”

ChristianTimeReligionHopeChristianityHistoryBibleCatholicScriptureCatholicismSecularApocalypseEnd Of The WorldSecularismRevelationHegelAugustineMarxChurch FathersHistoricismEnd Of The Time
Book:Belief or Nonbelief?
Create image

“[Asked by an audience member at a public Q&A session] Considering that atheism cannot possibly have any sense of 'absolute morality', would it not then be an irrational leap of faith – which atheists themselves so harshly condemn – for an atheist to decide between right and wrong? [Dawkins] Absolute morality...the absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include, what, stoning people for adultery? Death for apostasy? [...] These are all things which are religiously-based absolute moralities. I don't think I want an absolute morality; I think I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed, and based on – you could almost say intelligent design. [...] If you actually look at the moralities that are accepted among modern people – among 21st century people – we don't believe in slavery anymore; we believe in equality of women; we believe in being gentle; we believe in being kind to animals...these are all things which are entirely recent. They have very little basis in Biblical or Koranic scripture. They are things that have developed over historical time; through a consensus of reasoning, sober discussion, argument, legal theory, political and moral philosophy. These do not come from religion. To the extent that you can find the 'good bits' in religious scriptures, you have to cherry-pick. You search your way through the Bible or the Koran, and you find the occasional verse that is an acceptable profession of morality – and you say, look at that! That's religion!...and you leave out all the horrible bits. And you say, 'Oh, we don't believe that anymore, we've grown out of that.' Well, of course we've grown out of it. We've grown out of it because of secular moral philosophy and rational discussion.”

LifeScienceReligionPoliticsWomenFreedomSocietyAtheismMoralityLogicSlaveryHumanismEqualityReasoningAnimal RightsAnimalsSecularismTheismEmpiricismProgressivism
Author:Richard Dawkins
Create image

“By its very nature, the human mind, having a long history of animal instincts, is prone to inhuman corruption. That’s why it’s easier for a human to be a racist, but harder to be a human – it’s easier for a human to be homophobic, but harder to be a human – it’s easier for a human to be promiscuous, but harder to be a human - it’s easier for a human to be an inhuman, but harder to be a human. Yes, it’s hard – yes it’s less natural, than the alternative, yet, this very unnatural, hard endeavor of the mind determines whether you and I are going to raise a society of true humans or a society of good-looking savages.”

Human NatureRacismPrejudiceHumanismDiscriminationEvolutionary PsychologySecularismHomophobiaPromiscuity
Book:Conscience over Nonsense
Create image

“The fundamentalists take pride in the exclusive supremacy of their own scriptures, the nationalists take pride in the exclusive greatness of their own national heritage, the so-called intellectuals take pride in the exclusive glory of their own field of work. And pride in one thing inadvertently brings along either subconscious or conscious condescension towards all other things belonging to other people.”

InspirationalHuman NatureHumanismIdeologyNationalismFundamentalismSecularismFundamentalistTribalismNationalist
Book:Fabric of Humanity
Create image

“We do not need to eliminate religion, or let me be a bit articulate and say – we cannot eliminate religion from the human society, as long as there is misery and malnourishment in this world. God is nature’s antidote to misery, and religion is the capsule it comes in. And those who try to take away religion from the people, are simply fools - and the irony is, some of them are scientists, and quite brilliant ones in their fields. Religion is far too valuable in the human society, that’s why it has survived so long. So, we do not need to eliminate religion, but to make it evolve at par with our civilized conscience.”

PhilosophyGodReligionAtheismHuman NatureFundamentalismSecularismNeuropsychology
Book:Lord is My Sheep: Gospel of Human
Create image

“As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.”

DemocracyIslamHumanismTerrorismAfghanistanWorking ClassEgyptNational SecurityPakistanSecularismAl QaedaTalibanSaudi ArabiaJihadLeftismAlgeriaIslamismGeorge W BushSeptember 11 AttacksCentral Intelligence AgencyPat RobertsonJerry FalwellFederal Bureau Of InvestigationDaniel Lapin
Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
Create image

“Insan Chalisa (Abridged) Jai Insan, Chetna Sagar; Jai Vivek, Vidyut Ujagar. Rise Insan, Ilaaj Ilahi; Al Hub, Hayat Paygamber. Ik Onkar, Satnam Shahada; One Insan Bodhi Vihara. Born of Ash, Deed Amartya; Once Ignited, Ashiq Ananta. Vision Virat, Vajra Avinashi; Kafir Kareem to Vidyesh Vinashi. Unbent Akhanda in Realm Divided, Dervish Divaane, Advaita Ruhani.”

HumanismToleranceSufismAdvaitaSecularismInterfaithHindutvaDivine PoetryCommunal HarmonyGurbani
Book:Sonnets From The Mountaintop
Create image

“Recognition or no recognition, Human never forgets to be human. The entire Abhijit Naskar legacy was created without any recognition. Then why did I continue you ask, Because I never wrote for admiration. I write to provide shelter to all, And electrify their veins into action.”

SacrificePerseveranceHumanismRecognitionService Of HumanityAdmirationHumanistWriters On WritingAdvaitaSecularism
Book:Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn
Create image

“World Gospel (The Sonnet) So long as there is selfishness, There is no Christmas. So long as there is occupation, There is no Hanukkah. So long as there is cruelty, There is no Ramadan. Till we end militant atheism, There is no Humanism. Till you conquer superstition, There is no Diwali. So long as there is division, There is no Vaisakhi. So long as there is inequality, There is no Fourth of July. Till we abolish hate from earth, At half mast all flags must fly.”

HumanismMulticulturalismSecularismHate CrimeInterfaithReligious HarmonyCultural IntegrationMulticulturalZionismReligious Diversity
Book:Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets
Create image

“It's not enough to outgrow the divisions in culture, we must also outgrow the divisions in intellect. For example, if you think theology is all about the supernatural, it doesn't mean the entire field of theology is nonsense, it just means, you are studying the wrong kind of theology – you are stuck with an archaic notion of theology. Likewise, if you think science is all about cold facts and figures, then you are studying the wrong kind of science – you are stuck with an archaic notion of science. Till you develop a common humane ground underneath your feet, all the facts and all the faith won't do you any good.”

HumanismToleranceExistentialismHumanistAgnosticScience And ReligionSecularismReligious HarmonyPeaceful CoexistenceHumanistic Psychology
Book:Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect
Create image

“Plenty Room For All (The Sonnet) Turban, Hijab, Habit or Tuxedo, Wear whatever feels like second skin. No need to justify to judgmental apes, Life's too short to be wasted on fiends. Let them just fade away, as vestigials of evolution. Savagery requires treatment, not serious consideration. To be treated as a human being, One must behave as human being. Faith, intellect, both are poison, If the heart remains ever so mean. There's plenty room for all thoughts, No matter the measures of books 'n brain. Fiction, reason, all are welcome, On my earth where but love reigns.”

AcceptanceHumanismToleranceIntoleranceSecularismReligious FreedomInterfaithReligious HarmonyTolerationReligious Diversity
Book:Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion
Create image