religion

"He was a wise man who invented God."

"The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin'."

"What has he found who has lost God?And what has he lost who has found God?"

"Could it be, as one writer puts it, that every knock at the door of a brothel is actually a knock at the heart of God?"

"Common sense is no match for the voice of God."

"I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so."

"If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to it."

"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."

"It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion."

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

"What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives."

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."

"Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!"

"One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad."

"Your way of life is sinful and wrong,"he said fiercely.Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear."

"When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims."

"Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

"There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over."

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."(Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, May 16, 1767)"