#religion

"I will not join the rat race because I'm not a rat. And I will not blindly follow a specific faith because I'm not a bat. The only race I'll take part in is for humans being humane. It's called the human race, and sadly it's got the least participants."

"When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within."

"To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries"

"I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow."

"Coincidence is God's way of being anonymous."

"You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors."

"If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments."

"Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey."

"What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is."

"We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon."

"Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."

"You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too."

"My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

"I need no master to punish me in order to behave as I ought. If I did, I would be no more than a child who obeys his father's rules only because he fears the whip, and not because he actually means good."

"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque."

"salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb."

"You know, we can quote the written Word all day to our friends, but nothing will touch them like our own hunger and love for the Word himself. It is not dutiful love that attracts but love freely lavished from a heart familiar with the gardens of heaven."

"My father chose my name , and my last name was chosen by my ancestors . That’s enough, I myself choose my way"

"I don't see,' I said, 'how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion."

"...much theological discussion is wasted, not because the words used have no possible meaning, but because the people who use them don't mean anything by them."