religion

"Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you."

"من لم يتحرر من الاكراه في صورتيه: اكراه الاخر والخضوع للاخر، لايستطيع فهم هذا الدين وتمثيله"

"Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat."

"I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... . I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness."

"Regardless of your chosen faith, at the end of your life's journey, your heart will be measured in two ways. One, the weight of your conscience must far outweigh the weight of a feather. Two, any impurities in your heart must weigh no more than one feather."

"Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions."

"Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man."

"All religions lead to the same God, and all deserve the same respect. Anyone who chooses a religion is also choosing a collective way for worshipping and sharing the mysteries. Nevertheless, that person is the only one responsible for his or her actions along the way and has no right to shift responsibility for any personal decisions on to that religion."

"Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy."

"We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome."

"People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers."

"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."

"If all men are made in God's reflection, then why do some people continue to acknowledge only what is in their part of the mirror? If every man was created equal and in the image of God, then how can any man claim that one race is better than another?"

"As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples."

"Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

"They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous."

"[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions."

"Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing."

"[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 that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company."

"To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell."