If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological...

I always try to share with others the idea that in order to become compassionate it is not necessary to become religious.

Don’t water your testimony with your righteous expectations of church members. Their imperfection will disappoint you every time and cause you to leave every church you try to join.

There are at least two ways to believe in the idea of quality. You can believe there’s something ineffable going on within the human mind, or you can believe we just don’t understand what quality...

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards!

When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief...

Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they’d seen the need for gods as the sort...

Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, “I will not hit you if you do not hit me”; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both...

İnsanlığı sarsan en iğrenç kötülükler, en korkunç acımasızlıklar, en büyük sefaletler temelini vahiy ya da gökten indirilen din denilen bu olguda bulmaktadır. İnsanın yaratılışından bu yana yayılmasına çalışılan yüceliğin niteliğine karşı en onursuz inanç, ahlaka...

The modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration; and the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of what he meant by religious liberty and equality. He took...

As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they’re...

To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives.

[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said...

It’s only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent...

makes” bad things happen. Death happens to everyone, not as a punishment, but because we are not meant to stay on this earth forever. As a result we are vulnerable rather than invincible, as is...

Peradaban Barat di bawahnya berkumpul kebudayaan Barat berlainan dari berbagai bangsa Eropa. Peradaban Islam menyatukan beraneka ragam kebudayaan untuk Islam yang terdiri atas berbagai bangsa Timur.

Common sense is no match for the voice of God.

Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that’s wrong . . . . The answer to bad religion is better religion–prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and...

God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces.

The light within us gives power for good actions.

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation’s official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a...

In a scientific age, the challenge for the believer is to recognize God’s divine upholding of the overall visible process.

Just as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.

Religion starts with desolation and ends with misery.

Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people — in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind...

If I had the choice between being a Muslim or an animal; I would have certainly opted for the latter one.

Beliefs divide us; values unite us.” Godless – Living a Valuable Life beyond Beliefs.

…men are monsters all, and something in them wants to force others to see the world the same way they see it.

The unfortunate are not as miserable as the world imagines. That urchins, the handicapped, orphans, prisoners and others are much happier than people think. And that language is a trap, that a dark evolutionary force...

Everyone has the right to believe whatever he or she wants. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, atheitsts, and every other religion. People can follow whichever they choose. Even if you and I believe Christianity is the...

Currently spirituality is at an ebb in the more advanced technological societies. This in part because memes that validate spiritual order tend to lose their credibility with time, and need to be recast in new...

That not adhering to those notions Reason dictates (concerning the nature of God), has been the occasion of all superstition, and those innumerable mischiefs that mankind (on account of religion) have done to themselves or...

People call you extremist when you are spreading Islam but always remember that you are not..they are extremist because they are endangering there own life with there own hands.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”[Moral...

Her total intellectual association was the Bible, except the talk of Samuel and her children, and to them she did not listen. In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge...

Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.

Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all.

The gods, not out of mercy, have made me strong.

[I]m Hain des Tempels und im Schatten der Zitadelle habe ich die Freiesten unter euch ihre Freiheit als Joch und Handschellen tragen sehen.

The quality common to the three experiences… is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be...

The Soviet state was, in fact, almost perfectly designed to make people unhappy. It denied its citizens not just hope, but also trust. Every activity had to be sanctioned by the state. Any person could...

I am amazed at the heart of man: It possesses the substance of wisdom as well as the opposites contrary to it … for if hope arises in it, it is brought low by covetousness:...

Teo had once claimed that human history began with a storm: the interval between lightning and thunder, between flash and rumble felt in the body’s core, was primitive man’s first experiences of time — the...

It doesn’t matter how many drugs I take, I’m not fulfilled. This isn’t satisfying. There’s a spiritual hunger going on. Everybody feels it. If you don’t feel it now, you will. Trust me. You will…...

But you must still know to respect other people’s faith.”Why? We don’t respect any other delusion. We lock up people who believe they’re Christ, yet we’re supposed to humour those who believe in him.”By definition,...

I doubt that anyone has a Damascus moment after experiencing discrimination. Most people seem to have shining moments of change after experiencing grace.

A non-religious man today ignores what he considers sacred but, in the structure of his consciousness, could not be without the ideas of being and the meaningful. He may consider these purely human aspects of...

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.

I imagine God creating humans was much like cavemen creating fire… First it sparkles brightly, full of life and beauty. But then it grows, stronger and fiercer until it becomes dangerous and uncontrollable… Then its...

When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, “You think your dad’s a good chemist? They’re turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?