religion

"The most difficult dilemma for a person is perhaps when his heart testifies to an inevitable reality yet his tongue will not proclaim it, when his mind screams in acceptance of truth but he cant bring himself to state it."

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

"I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas."

"knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith"

"Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it's a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it's made up of people, every faith also has its assholes."

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."

"I think, well, I've had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn't fair. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time... But I think, any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night... 'Strewth, well, you've got to respect the old bastard, haven't you?"

"Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that."

"Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action."

"The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation."

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."

"I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me."

"If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it."

"The only interesting thing about religion is how many people it's slaughtered. Communism and Nazism are religions as well, make no mistake about it."

"Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them."

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end."

"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."

"If religion is a crutch, then society is the broken foot."

"What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons."

"Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of GodAnd tasted the eternal joys of heaven,Am not tormented with ten thousand hellsIn being deprived of everlasting bliss?"