religion

"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching."

"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 faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence."

"One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it."

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

"If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission."

"I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look after her. Believe me, there is nothing so insufferable as a saint, I wouldn't sic one on my worst enemy."

"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?"

"down with hell and heaven and all the religious fussinfinity pleased our parents one inch looks good to us"

"The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness."

"There is no God and we are his prophets."

"I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world."

"The Holy Land is everywhere"

"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 asked why I don't believe in God I reply, quite simply, "vaginas"."

"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of mad libs."

"Why did they believe? Because they saw miracles. Things one man took as chance, a man of faith took as a sign. A loved one recovering from disease, a fortunate business deal, a chance meeting with a long lost friend. It wasn't the grand doctrines or the sweeping ideals that seemed to make believers out of men. It was the simple magic in the world around them."

"It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I live in the here and now."

"If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason."

"With a truly tragic delusion,” Carl Jung noted, “these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing."