Religious Christmas Quotes

God seeks to influence humanity. This is at the heart of the Christmas story. It is the story of light coming into the darkness, of a Savior to show us the way, of light overcoming the darkness, of God's work to save the world. ~ Adam Hamilton

Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation. ~ J.I. Packer

The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable. ~ Ralph Washington Sockman

The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

All the Christmas presents in the world are worth nothing without the presence of Christ. ~ David Jeremiah

Christmas is based on an exchange of gifts, the gift of God to man - His unspeakable gift of His Son, and the gift of man to God - when we present our bodies a living sacrifice. ~ Vance Havner

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection. ~ Winston Churchill

Rejoice, that the immortal God is born, so that mortal man may live in eternity. ~ Jan Hus

I love Christmas! I'm not religious, but I love the trappings of the season. I love the decorations, and the music, and Santa, and the festive food, and the cinnamon- and vanilla-infused aromas. ~ Jane Cleland

What is the point of praying to God if you are in this condition?" I have been asked. "Why pray to God at all?"

It's a question I put to you. What is the importance of prayer during your own time of crisis or challenge? I want you to know that this is not a chapter designed to convert you to a particular religious practice. I am not here to try to get you to follow the same religious faith that I do. But I am convinced that God works in all of our lives, that He is there to help us lift our lives above the level of mere existence, and that He is always summoning us to be more than we started out to be. ~ Art E. Berg

If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;

If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can't you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;

And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

It was then that my religious consciousness emerged to flower years afterward into definite forms of religious dancing in which there is no sense of division between spirit and flesh, religion and art. ~ Ruth St. Denis

The leaders of the Pahlavi regime, in an attempt to forestall the rising tide of the Islamic revolutionary movement, were hard at work to cast doubt on the question of the Imam Khomeini's position as a Marja'a (a top religious authority) and in this way, undermine public faith in his academic, political and religious competence. ~ Yousef Saanei

In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong. ~ Carl Sagan

Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A universal renunciation of violence requires the commitment of the whole of society. These are not matters of government but matters of State; not only matters for the authoirities, but for society in its entirety, including civilian, military, and religious bodies. The mobilization which is urgently needed to effect the transition within two or three years from a culture of war to a culture of peace demands co-operation from everyone. In order to change, the world needs everyone. ~ Federico Mayor Zaragoza

I'm against unanswerable concentrations of power, whether that be government or private industry or religious figures - anybody who is not accountable to the larger social climate or society for the power they wield, that concerns me. I'm very pro-democracy. ~ Daniel Suarez

Twas the night before Christmas - well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter - and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo - always hungry - had taken the opportunity for a quick snack. ~ Kat Richardson

In listing these tendencies making for a new world, we must not forget developments in the religious or spiritual thinking and feeling of mankind, where also we feel a strong unifying trend. ~ Emily Greene Balch

I think we recognize as Americans there are certain things that are just primary to the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy here and religious freedom is one of the most important things we as Americans cherish. ~ Ann Romney

Satan's aim is to destroy our joy and trust and delight in God, and to make God look worthless in the world's eyes. Everytime someone forsakes God for the world, gets angry at God when part of the world is taken away from them, they highlight the world as valuable ... and everytime someone stays with God, when the world is taken away, and praises God, they highlight the value and glory of God. ~ John Piper

The games of the ancient Greeks were, in their original institutions, religious solemnities. ~ Dorothea Brande

The only thing that separates the Jews of Israel from the fate of the Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria is the might of the Israel Defense Forces. Faced with murderous terrorists, Israelis are able to respond with F-16s, Merkava tanks, and one of the best-trained armies in the world. ~ Jay Sekulow

At the group consciousness level, you're often dedicated to continuing social problems such as war, brutality, and religious persecution, which originated in ancestral enmities that have existed for thousands of years. But it also comes right down to daily living. Families insist that you adopt their viewpoint, hate whom they hate, and love whom they love. You have blind allegiance to a company that may be making weapons of destruction, a concept to which you're normally opposed, but you do it anyway because "it's my job." Some policemen and soldiers victimize their fellow human beings by behaving worse than the criminals or so-called enemies they abhor so much. Our inhumanity to our fellow human beings is often justified on the grounds of a group-consciousness mentality. Members of gangs or societies will behave in horrid ways, spurred on by a group or clan mentality. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

And even at Christmas, there is nothing to be gained by wishing for what one can't possibly have. ~ Victoria Alexander

You cannot know, and become, that which you are, in the absence of that which you are not, as I have already explained to you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious
unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force. ~ Mark Twain

In the domain of primitive spirituality, that is, supernatural spirituality, the mind loses all its sanity in the name of non-conformity and takes nonsense to be a form of higher sense and supernatural insanity and fallacy to be spiritual sanity and truth. In an attempt to break free from the chains of religious orthodoxy as well as radical rationalism, these mysticism-obsessed beings, who pompously prefer to call themselves "lightworkers", "yogis", "mystics" and so on, end up bound in yet another form of orthodoxy or extremism, replete with the primal psychological germs of supernaturalism. ~ Abhijit Naskar

We have power ... Our power isn't in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems ... they have power ... but it's not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings. ~ John Trudell

Non-duality has been the root of all religious movements on this planet. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd. ~ Voltaire

Some people find no comfort in the prophets' vision of a future world. "The church has used that line for centuries to justify slavery, oppression, and all manner of injustice," they say. The criticism sticks because the church has abused the prophets' vision. But you will never find that "pie in the sky" rationale in the prophets themselves. They have scathing words about the need to care for widows and orphans and aliens, and to clean up corrupt courts and religious systems. The
people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong. Rather, they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass. ~ Philip Yancey

I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one. ~ Bonnie Raitt

A clearly written and passionately argued indictment of centuries of antisemitism that contributed to Nazi extermination of the Jews. Wilensky has read widely, thought deeply, and writes persuasively in placing the Holocaust into the larger context of the history of Western Christianity. What he concludes is deeply disturbing and must be confronted seriously by scholars and public alike. Six Million Crucifixions is an important book for our- - or any - age of religious conflict and intolerance. ~ Geoffrey Cocks

A Christmas without a book for a present is a disappointment. ~ Margareta Magnusson

The True Believer ignores anything that doesn't fit his belief system. Instead, he inevitably comes to hold those beliefs at a very profound level. They can become absolutely part of his identity. It is this that brings together the religious, the psychic, the cynic (as opposed to the open skeptic) and the narrow-minded of all kinds. It is something I encountered a lot among my fellow Christians. At one level it can be seen in the circular discussion which goes as follows:

Why do you believe in the bible?
Because it is Gods word.
And why do you believe in God?
Because of what it says in the bible.

At a less obvious level, it can be seen in the following common exchange:

Why do you believe Christianity is true?
Because I have the experience of a personal relationship with God.
So how do you know you're not fooling yourself?
Because i know it is real.

Even as an enthusiastic believer myself I could see this kind of tautology at work, and over time I realized that it is common to all forms of True Belief., regardless of the particular belief in question. The fact is, it's enormously difficult - and you need to be fantastically brave - to overcome the circularity of your own ideologies. But just because our identity might be tied up with what we believe, it doesn't make that belief any more correct. One wishes that True Believers of any sort would learn a little modesty in their convictions. ~ Derren Brown

The True-Blue American"

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,
For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must
Think about everything; because that's all there is to think about,
Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,
Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity
For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and
Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah
Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split
He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it
Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:
Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;
Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between;
Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing
in his breast
The infinite and the gold
Of the endless frontier, the deathless West.

"Both: I will have them both!" declared this true-blue American
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed
By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten,
Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of
Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon,
Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and
Shining in the darkness, of the light
On Saturdays at th ~ Delmore Schwartz

It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society. ~ Criss Jami

But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept. ~ Sheila Walsh

My idea of the Christian religion is, that it is an inspiration and its vital consequences
an inspiration and a life
God's life breathed into a man and breathed through a man
the highest inspiration and the highest life of every soul which it inhabits; and, furthermore, that the soul which it inhabits can have no high issue which is not essentially religious. ~ J.G. Holland

He took the Who's feast, he took the Who pudding, he took the roast beast. He cleaned out that ice box as quick as a flash. Why, the Grinch even took their last can of Who hash. ~ Dr. Seuss

Gave a girl herpes in exchange for syphilis, put my LP on your Christmas gift list. ~ Eminem

I don't want to be married because it's convenient, or because it's the right thing to do for bloody Duntarvie Estate."
"I couldn't give a shit about Duntarvie Estate. I want to marry you because I love you." This came out as almost a shout. Roderick looked at her, furious.
"Fine." Kate snapped back at him, irritated.
"Fine." He turned away from her, picking up the axe again.
"Right. That's that sorted."
"Right. ~ Rachael Lucas

The funny thing is all these school shootings that we have, always happen in very religious communities. Maybe it's because the centre of their lives is a big fat nothing and it's just a fantasy and there's nothing there. I think maybe that might have something to do with it. ~ Matthew Bright

First inclination is to become a monk and leave the situation. ~ Young MC

I don't consider myself a religious person, but I consider myself a very spiritual person. I would say I have a relationship with God, I believe in God, I do. ~ Youth Lagoon