Religious Folk Quotes

Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others. ~ Jeffrey Tayler

I can't imagine why a media company views a law preventing the commission of hate speech as a restriction on media freedom, but it is probably similar to how some religious folk view hate speech as being essential to religious freedom. ~ Christina Engela

I don't really think of myself as a folk singer. ~ Ray Lamontagne

The International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) ... to establish a superior library reflecting the religious and intellectual traditions both of the Islamic and Western civilizations. ~ Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

God has given us the gift of faith that we can take what's unseen and make it part of who we are. ~ David Jeremiah

The heart is naturally hard, and grows harder by custom in sin, especially by long abuse of mercy, neglect of the means of grace, and resisteing the spirit of grace. ~ Richard Baxter

Good Lord," I whisper at my thoughts, barely stifling a shiver. "Kissing me is similar to a religious experience, or so I've been told." Gleaming green eyes meet mine as he teases me. ~ Anonymous

I think a misconception among many non-religious people is that anyone with a strong faith is, in all ways and at all times, blindly consistent, unwavering, unquestioning. ~ Alice McDermott

Because He lives, I can face yesterday. ~ Jared C. Wilson

[THE DAILY BREATH]

What do you do when you've made mistakes and you can't wash away by yourself the guilt you now have to live with? What do you do when you feel you are all alone, struggling in secret with hurt and pain you cannot share with others? What do you do when you reach the point when the books don't work, when your friends can't and won't do anything more for you, when the psychological techniques and the meditations fail, when the experts raise their shoulders because they don't know how to help you, when you feel abandoned with no way out?

Religious people will tell you that you cannot come before God because you are dirty or not good enough, but I tell you: go before God because this is the only thing that will truly heal your life.

Just as you are, naked, broken, dirty and hurt, walk before Jesus and tell Him everything on your heart. You cannot even grasp now the mercy and grace you receive when you open your heart to Him. ~ Dragos Bratasanu

The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don't approve of abortion? Don't have one. Don't approve of gay marriage? Don't have one. Don't approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ's sake, don't have one. But don't tell me I can't have one - each and every one - because it offends your God. ~ Dan Savage

The root of addict in latin is the word addicere, which means religious devotion. It was an attribute of beginning monks. There is an element in the book [Infinite Jest] in which various people are living out something that I think is true, which is that we all worship. We all have a religious impulse. We can choose, to an extent, what we worship, but the myth that we worship nothing and give ourselves away to nothing, simply sets ourselves up to give ourselves away to something different. For instance, pleasure or drugs or the idea of having a lot of money, being able to buy nice stuff. ~ David Foster Wallace

I urge our people everywhere, with all of the persuasiveness of which I am capable, to live worthy to hold a temple recommend, to secure one and regard it as a precious asset, and to make a greater effort to go to the House of the Lord and partake of the spirit and the blessings to be had therein. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

As both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science. ~ Alan Lightman

I am so much a Unitarian as this: that I believe the human mind can admit but one God, and that every effort to pay religious homage to more than one being goes to take away all right ideas. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere.
The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust ~ Raul Hilberg

I am against the word 'anti' because it's a little bit like 'atheist,' as compared to 'believer.' And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Do you give your servants reasons for your expenditure, or your economy in the use of your own money? We, the owners of capital, have a right to choose what we will do with it.' 'A human right,' said Margaret, very low. 'I beg your pardon, I did not hear what you said.' 'I would rather not repeat it,' said she; 'it related to a feeling which I do not think you would share.' 'Won't you try me?' pleaded he; his thoughts suddenly bent upon learning what she had said. She was displeased with his pertinacity, but did not choose to affix too much importance to her words. 'I said you had a human right. I meant that there seemed no reason but religious ones, why you should not do what you like with your own. ~ Anonymous

Forgiveness has been distorted by religious conditioning. Religion is designed to control your personal authenticity, sovereignty, self empowerment, and check book. So drop all ideas of bending your knee to an entity that needs your worship as worship is parasitical. ~ Deborah Bravandt

I loathe the mess of mean superstitions and misunderstood prophecies which is still rammed down the throats of children under the name of Christianity. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Yet, for I know thou art religious
And hast a thing within thee called conscience,
With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies
Which I have seen thee careful to observe,
Therefore I urge thy oath; for that I know
An idiot holds his bauble for a god
And keeps the oath which by that god he swears,
To that I'll urge him: therefore thou shalt vow
By that same god, what god soe'er it be,
That thou adorest and hast in reverence,
To save my boy, to nourish and bring him up,
Or else I will discover naught to thee. ~ William Shakespeare

Ordinarily, even when people become religious, they go on thinking in terms of having - possessing heaven or possessing the pleasures of heaven - but still they go on thinking in terms of having. Their heaven is nothing but their projected desire of having everything. All that they have missed here they would like to have in the after-life. But it is the same desire. ~ Rajneesh

God is not grieved because of "all the homosexuals." Not in the very least. That's religious people you're thinking of. If God is grieved it's because the beautiful, incomparable message of redemption and grace, the sweet peace of a loving relationship, has been truncated, rerouted into a message of behavior-modification and sin-management. For ~ Susan Cottrell

Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, the seat of Sunni Islamic doctrine, and has tremendous political, religious and social influence on the rest of the region. For better or worse, it will lead the rest of the Middle East by example. So goes Egypt, so goes the region. ~ Richard Engel

One act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one's time in religious offerings to the gods ... ~ Gautama Buddha

He's just the "one". Not in a religious, demi-god sort of way even though I wouldn't put it past him to think that of himself. ~ J.J. McAvoy

We acquire both the language and religious concepts from our immediate culture – at the same time. A child cannot discriminate between useful survival information and the emotional and psychological manipulations of religion. Once infected, these ideas are deeply embedded and almost impossible to change. ~ Darrel Ray

I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker. ~ Adolf Hitler

Man is constantly building anxiety-structures, like geodesic domes, around his social and religious institutions. ~ Northrop Frye

It's a little-known fact that most terrorist groups fail, and that all of them die. Lest this seem hard to believe, just reflect on the world around you. Israel continues to exist, Northern Ireland is still a part of the United Kingdom, and Kashmir is a part of India. There are no sovereign states in Kurdistan, Palestine, Quebec, Puerto Rico, Chechnya, Corsica, Tamil Eelam, or Basque Country. The Philippines, Algeria, Egypt, and Uzbekistan are not Islamist theocracies; nor have Japan, the United States, Europe, and Latin America become religious, Marxist, anarchist, or new-age utopias. The numbers confirm the impressions. ~ Steven Pinker

Some scientists have gone further and have speculated that there is a "God gene" that predisposes the brain to be religious. Since most societies have created a religion of some sort, it seems plausible that our ability to respond to religious feelings might be genetically programmed into our genome. ~ Michio Kaku

If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced. ~ Thomas Berry

Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. ~ Jon Krakauer

It is because of religious dogma, (black health care professional Thelma) Delgado says, that young African Americans believe "God will make a way for their survival, so they may drop out of school, have children with no visible means of supporting them, or simply not plan for their financial future because they believe god will handle the hardships and the details that rationalists plan for. ~ Sikivu Hutchinson In Moral Combat Black Atheists Gender Politics And The Values Wars

The woman in the film drinks in a bar. She's in hair curlers, a chiffon headscarf tied over them like a tarp over a log pile. The hollows of the curlers, spaces for hope: something good might happen.

There was no sign of Sandro. I watched the film to keep myself awake while I waited.

A man bought the woman a beer. She took dainty sips in her hair curlers, in preparation for no specific occasion. Curler time seemed almost religious, a waiting that was more important than what the waiting was for. Curler time was about living the now with a belief that a future, an occasion for set hair, existed. ~ Rachel Kushner

We will see the day when we live on what we produce. ~ Marion G. Romney