religion

"I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."

"People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.-- Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy"

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There`s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."

"The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon."

"The marks humans leave are too often scars."

"The gods of the realms are many and varied -- or they are the many and varied names and identities tagged onto the same being. I know not -- and care not -- which."

"Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup."

"You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes too many people angry. You can talk about sex."

"And I, Nephi, took one of the daughters of Ishmael to wife.' Well Mr. Go-And-Do just went and did!"

"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"

"Are there any religions on your list that include the slaughter of noblemen as a holy duty?"

"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men."

"I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry."

"If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

"عليك بالمطالب العالية والمراتب السامية التي لا تنال إلا بطاعة الله، فإن الله عز وجل قضى أن لا ينال ما عنده إلا بطاعته. ومن كان لله كما يريد كان الله له فوق ما يريد، فمن أقبل عليه تلقاه من بعيد، ومن تصرف بحوله وقوته ألان له الحديد، ومن ترك لأجله أعطاه فوق المزيد، ومن أراد مراده الديني أراد ما يريد"

"love the life you live.live the life you love."

"I want to read the employment section of the Bible. I think it’s simply called Job."

"They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet."

"God save us from people who mean well."

"He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion."