#organized-religion

"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God."

"Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?"

"Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh. ...And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion."

"The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it."

"I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate."

"The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.''What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either."

"I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it."

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

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. ... These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry."

"God save us from religion."

"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!"

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."