Religious Architecture Quotes

In the 1970s, while researching in the Library of Congress, I found an obscure history of religious architecture that assumed a fact as if it were common knowledge: the traditional design of most patriarchal buildings of worship imitates the female body. Thus, there is an outer and inner entrance, labia majora and labia minora; a central vaginal aisle toward the altar; two curved ovarian structures on either side; and then in the sacred center, the altar or womb, where the miracle takes place - where males gives birth.
Though this comparison was new to to me, it struck home like a rock down a well. Of course, I thought. The central ceremony of patriarchal religions is one in which men take over the yoni-power of creation by giving birth symbolically. No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin - because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life. No wonder the male priesthood tries to keep women away from the altar, just as women are kept away from control of our own powers of reproduction. Symbolic or real, it's all devoted to controlling the power that resides in the female body. ~ Gloria Steinem

I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution. ~ George Washington

Any law that belittles God is man made. ~ Auliq Ice

When did atheists become so evangelical? I mean, if you don't believe something to be true, wouldn't you just ignore it? That's certainly what I do. Whether it's leprechauns or a congressional debt reduction plan - if I'm convinced it's fiction, I simply put it out of my mind. Not the atheists. They are obsessed with faith and religious practice. Their identities and their works are one big reaction to that which they hate. No longer content to simply dismiss God and those who follow in Him, the New Atheists have created a cult of unbelief. ~ Laura Ingraham

Trinity Park lies directly across from the library, Trinity Church rising like a midieval thought amidst the glass and steel towers. ~ Nick Flynn

For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into half halves - to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a weekday. Do you think he cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer - and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the 'dim religious light' of some solemn cathedral? ~ Lewis Carroll

Blame enables us to smuggle our issues into our future. ~ Andy Stanley

We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion suffer by all such interference. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

God has protected his anointed. And the wrath of Purgatory is certainly coming for those who run and are in need of its cleansing fire. You can run, but you can't hide. ~Father Abraham ~ Lucian Bane

It is important for people to recognize that those who are working for the dissolution of our society have a spiritual agenda. They are not merely attempting to dismantle the historic cultural values of this nation and move us toward a homogenized world. They also want to destroy Christianity and Bible-based religion. It is a clear part of their agenda and they have already moved a long way in that direction. ~ Pat Robertson

Mass delusions bear consequences.
They lead to mass graves. ~ A.J. Deus

This is not (as you have charged) to paint religion with a broad brush. I am very quick to distinguish gradations of bad ideas; some clearly have no consequences at all (or at least not yet); some put civilization itself in peril. The problem with dogmatism, however, is that one can never quite predict how terrible its costs will be. To use one of my favorite examples, consider the Christian dogma that human life begins at the moment of conception: On its face, this belief seems likely to only improve our world. After all, it is the very quintessence of a life-affirming doctrine.

Enter embryonic stem-cell research. Suddenly, this "life begins at the moment of conception" business becomes the chief impediment to medical progress. Who would have thought that such an innocuous idea could unnecessarily prolong the agony of tens of millions of people? This is the problem with dogmatism, no matter how seemingly benign: it is unresponsive to reality. Dogmatism is a failure of cognition (as well as a commitment to such failure); it is the state of being closed to new evidence and new arguments. And this frame of mind is rightly despised in every area of culture, on every subject, except where it goes by the name of "religious faith." In this guise, parading its most grotesque faults as virtues, it is granted a special dispensation, even in the pages of Nature. ~ Sam Harris

Has your relationship with God changed the way you live your life? ~ Francis Chan

Dear Pope, send me some hope or a rope. ~ Lou Reed

People are living in unconsciousness, doing all kinds of things in unconsciousness. Everybody is an unconscious robot. We are just pretending that we are conscious; we are not conscious. The moment you become conscious, all unconscious actions disappear from your life. Your life starts moving in a new dimension. Your each act comes out of inner clarity; your each response is virtuous, is virtue. To live unconsciously is to live in sin; to live consciously is to be virtuous, is to be religious. And to live in total awareness is to be a buddha, is to be a christ. ~ Rajneesh

YOU DON'T HAVE TO ALWAYS TAKE SIDES!

Did you know, that it is entirely possible to disagree with BOTH self-proclaimed nationalists & those deemed anti-nationals, BOTH right-wing & left-wing hardcores, BOTH ultra-religious people & atheists, BOTH vegans & meat-eaters, BOTH CrossFitters & non-CrossFitters, BOTH 'cardio' & 'non-cardio' folks, AND BOTH 'low-carbers' & 'high-carbers'?!

It's called THINKING FOR YOURSELF! It gives you an identity. It's a highly pleasurable job too; it involves telling people off. I highly recommend it! ~ Deepak S. Hiwale

There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film. ~ John Boorman

I like it when people are driven. I love that in any field of work, in architecture or whatever. Like Lorne Michaels - he pays attention to every detail. ~ Fred Armisen

Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or "way," an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious - a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand - and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.
John Gardner ~ Marcy Sheiner

Goodhue wanted visitors to feel more than they were in a pretty building. He wanted them to feel they were part of a three-dimensional meditation on the power of human intellect and the potency of storytelling. ~ Susan Orlean

Jesus's gospel is not about a cosmic religious apocalypse upon rebellious pagans. His gospel is about a new messianic kingdom where He rules in the spirit of His Father, a kingdom full of joy, grace, freedom, and release from all that ails humanity. ~ Hugh Halter

The dialectical change of mind that occurs in Buddhism is not simply the assimilation of a new philosophical basis or religious basis for viewing and interpreting experience. Rather it is the complete structural revision of that which is. ~ Frederick Lenz

Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture,' ~ William McDonough

I think that if you were to probe a lot of people's religious opinions, they would not be as religious as the numbers would suggest. ~ Steven Pinker

The questions of God – meaning in Milton's phrase "The god who hung the stars like lamps in heaven" – I don't think psychedelics can address that definitively, but there is another god, a goddess, the goddess of biology, the goddess of the coherent animal human world, the world of the oceans, the atmosphere, and the planet. In short, our world! The world that we were born into, that we evolved into, and that we came from. That world, the psychedelics want to connect us up to… Our individuality, as people and as a species, is an illusion of bad language that the psychedelics dissolve into the greater feeling of connectedness that underlies our being here, and to my mind that's the religious impulse. It's not a laundry list of moral dos and don'ts, or a set of dietary prescriptions or practices: it's a sense of connectedness, responsibility for our fellow human beings and for the earth you walking around on, and because these psychedelics come out of that plant vegetable matrix they are the way back into it. ~ Terence McKenna

With the fate of Roe v. Wade now hanging in the balance, I'm calling for a special 'pro-life tax.' If the fervent prayers of the religious right are answered and abortion is banned, let's take it a step further. All good Christians should legally be required to pony up; share the financial burden of raising an unwanted child. That's right: put your money where your Bible is. I'm not just talking about paying for food and shelter or even a college education. All those who advocate for driving a stake through the heart of a woman's right to choose must help bear the financial burden of that child's upbringing. They must be legally as well as morally bound to provide the child brought into this world at their insistence with decent clothes to wear; a toy to play with; a bicycle to ride -- even if they don't consider these things 'necessities.' Pro-lifers must be required to provide each child with all those things they would consider 'necessary' for their own children. Once the kid is out of the womb, don't wash your hands and declare 'Mission Accomplished!' It doesn't end there. If you insist that every pregnancy be carried to term, then you'd better be willing to pay the freight for the biological parents who can't afford to. And -- like the good Christians that you are -- should do so without complaint. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Following a meeting with Hitler, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, a man who had 'courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on the Catholic Church' - went away convinced that Hitler was deeply religious. ~ Ian Kershaw

According to Abdul Kalam Azad, 'It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally different. ~ Taslima Nasrin

Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason. ~ Martin Luther

1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.

2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.

3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.

4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.

5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.

6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.

7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.

8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.

9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.

10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.

11. That time excludes an ~ Czesław Miłosz

When you feel your life's too hard, just go have a talk with God. Well, he's the only free psychiatrist that's known throughout the world. ~ Stevie Wonder

women were beginning to see that custom, religious precept, and law were in fact man-made and therefore reversible. ~ Adam M. Grant

When you are at your lowest God speaks the loudest. ~ Joanne Wilson-Edwards

Nature is man's religious book, with lessons for every day. ~ Theodore Parker

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. What a Utopia! What a paradise this region would be. ~ John Adams

That text-books be permitted in Catholic schools such as will not offend the religious views of the minority, and which from an educational standpoint shall be satisfactory to the advisory board. ~ Charles Tupper

The downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied. ~ Isaac Asimov

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. ~ Salvador Dali

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Freedom possesses many meanings. It speaks not merely in terms of political and religious liberty but also in terms of economic and social progress. ~ Robert Kennedy