Quotes · Skopia

44 quotes

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

James George Frazer

1922

★ 0.8

Lecture

The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.

Max Weber

1917

★ 1.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life.

Friedrich Engels

Anti-Duhring · 1878

★ 1.1

Play

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

George Bernard Shaw

1898

★ 1.2

Political literature

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1835

★ 1.3

Anti-colonial literature

In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.

Mahatma Gandhi

1909

★ 1.3

Essay · Scientific literature

The priest persuades humble people to endure their hard lot; the politician urges them to rebel against it; and the scientist thinks of a method that does away with the hard lot altogether.

Max Perutz

1989

★ 1.7

It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

G.K. Chesterton

1906

★ 1.8

Newspaper

Faith is something you die for; a doctrine is something you kill for: there is all the difference in the world.

Tony Benn

1989

★ 1.8

Play · Tragedy (play)

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Christopher Marlowe

The Jew of Malta · 1593

★ 1.9

Historical literature

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1776

★ 1.9

Essay

A cult is a religion with no political power.

Tom Wolfe

1980

★ 1.9

Film · Comedy

I always say, religion is a fine thing, taken in moderation.

Coleman

Trading Places · 1983

★ 1.9

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

David Hume

A Treatise of Human Nature · 1739

★ 2.0

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.

James Joyce

The Egoist · 1915

★ 2.0

Travel writing

The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little by way of example.

Mark Twain

A Tramp Abroad · 1880

★ 2.1

Speech

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Albert Einstein

1940

★ 2.1

Scientific literature

There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search for gaps-gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in gaps?

Henry Drummond

1894

★ 3.5

Lecture

The religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

Alfred North Whitehead

Religion and Science · 1925

★ 3.5

Letter

I think it was a generous thought, and one that flowed from an exalted mind, that it was not improbable but God might be delighted with the various methods of worshipping him, which divided the whole world.

Alexander Pope

1716

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

George Santayana

The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress · 1905

★ 3.5

Lecture

From religion comes a man's purpose; from science his power to achieve it.

William Henry Bragg

1920

★ 3.5

Dialogue · Philosophical literature

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

George Santayana

1925

★ 3.5

A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle.

Charles S. Harris

1958

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Sex and religion are bordering states. They use the same vocabulary, share like ecstasies, and often serve as a substitute for one another.

Jessamyn West

1973

★ 3.5

Speech

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion that has breathed upon this earth, has degraded woman. There is not one that has not always made her subject to man.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1885

★ 3.6

Film · Adventure (film) · Drama (film) · Adventure · Drama

In a few hundred years, science has taken us farther in understanding the universe, than religion has in 10,000.

Santosh Patel

Life of Pi · 2012

★ 3.6

Essay · Satire

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Jonathan Swift

1711

★ 3.7

Short story

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

Jorge Luis Borges

1946

★ 3.7

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Religion; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 3.7

Religious literature

It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.

Tertullian

Ad Scapulam · 217

★ 3.8

Pamphlet · Religious literature · Philosophical literature

Any system of religion that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system.

Thomas Paine

The Age of Reason · 1794

★ 3.8

Poem

There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms As rum and true religion.

Lord Byron

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.8

Psychological literature

Religion is illusion, and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

Sigmund Freud

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis · 1933

★ 3.8

Scripture · Religious literature

No compulsion is there in religion.

Muhammad

The Quran, The Koran, 2:256 · 632

★ 3.9

Novel · Science fiction

The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

Robert A. Heinlein

Time Enough for Love · 1973

★ 4.2

Psychological literature

A genuine first-hand religious experience... Is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.

William James

The Varieties of Religious Experience · 1902

★ 4.4

A myth is a religion in which no-one any longer believes.

James K. Feibleman

Understanding Philosophy · 1973

★ 4.4

Religious literature

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

Christopher Hitchens

God is Not Great · 2007

★ 5.2

Religion is love; in no case is it logic.

Beatrice Potter Webb

1926

★ 5.3

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