Religious People Quotes

Even though our society is increasingly pluralistic, we must ensure an equal playing field rather than a religiously cleansed arena where people of faith are no longer welcome. ~ Jay Sekulow

It can no longer be claimed on demographic grounds that the 'vast majority' of Americans believe in Christ and the gospel. We do remain a highly religious people, especially when compared with Western Europe, but Americans are increasingly satisfying their metaphysical needs through forms of spirituality that have little or nothing to do with orthodox Christianity. ~ Michael Babcock

If religious people deny paradise to their opponents or to 'non-believers,' atheists would likewise seek to eliminate 'dangerous' believers with their 'childish' ways and their heads in the clouds. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Many people who say they have no religion are simply saying they have no official religious affiliation. They may actually have strong personal beliefs. ~ Rodney Stark

For those who think religious people live in a constant state of fear and quaking, compare Ps 111:10 to Ps 112:7. There, you will find that the person who fears God will not fear anyone, or anything else. This is not living in fear. By choosing one fear, they are liberated from the many fears. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

[Mullah Omar] gave himself this religious title. So it was something that all those people there who swore an oath of loyalty to him as a religious leader could not easily get rid of. ~ Ahmed Rashid

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. ~ Timothy Keller

Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration. ~ Desmond Tutu

I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. ~ Henry David Thoreau

For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes! ~ Adolf Hitler

I respect all religions. What I don't respect is when people use religion to attack others. I've met people across the world, in the middle of nowhere, who are just trying to survive and all they have is religion. In some why, it helps them, and I wouldn't take it away from them. There are also people who use to to hate and kill. I don't consider them religious people. ~ Angelina Jolie

Conservatives are more religious than liberals
although there is no evidence that they're nicer people because of it. ~ Andy Rooney

It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable. ~ Jane Asher

Why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species? ~ Brian D. McLaren

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope ... It is not a reflection of all religious people. ~ Lady Gaga

Religious people see "them" as the problem; Jesus-followers see "us" as the problem. ~ Jefferson Bethke

The reasons are likely rooted in religion. Playing around with God's creation is simply not allowed. Incidentally, in the past it was precisely the deeply religious people who said: Of course we're playing with God's creation, in fact we're perfecting it. This sort of thinking is frowned upon today. ~ Hans Von Storch

Too many religious people make faith their aim. They think 'the greatest of these' is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine. These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart. If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive. ~ William Sloane Coffin

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don't agree with us. ~ Oswald Chambers

I find that those who voted for George W. Bush are less offended by his religious references, and those who voted for Bill Clinton did not seem offended at all when people prayed at his inauguration. ~ Gwen Ifill

Religious people find God useful. Gospel people find him beautiful. ~ Timothy Keller

If we subject religious claims to a lesser degree of scrutiny, we should not be surprised if religious people subject us to a greater degree of servitude. ~ Stifyn Emrys

A religious belief ... is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating - these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers. ~ Anthony De Mello

So many religions are there because so many people are unhappy. A happy person needs no religion; a happy person needs no temple, no church - because for a happy person the whole universe is a temple, the whole existence is a church. The happy person has nothing like religious activity because his whole life is religious. ~ Rajneesh

When Democrats kind of cavalierly attack the religious right or go after Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, our candidates have sent the signal to a lot of religious people, 'Well, I guess they are not interested in me.' And I think this includes a lot of people who would fit very naturally within the Democratic Party. ~ Tim Kaine

If we will walk humbly with our God, He will lead us by the hand to exactly who and what we need, to those people, things, and experiences He has designed and intended for us, and this alone will be the cause of our deep fulfillment and happiness. ~ Matthew Kelly

Convinced that the attachment of colonies to the metropolis, depends infinitely more upon moral and religious feeling, than political arrangement, or even commercial advantage, I cannot but lament that more is not done to instill it into the minds of the people. ~ John Strachan

There are very religious people who write comics and who love comics. ~ G. Willow Wilson

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

The practice of altruism is the authentic way to live as a human being, and it is not just for religious people. As human beings, our purpose is to live meaningful lives, to develop a warm heart. There is meaning in being everyone's friend. The real source of peace amongst our families, friends and neighbours is love and compassion. ~ Dalai Lama

Religious people ... hold a kind and merciful view of life, the faith of the broken, the hounded, the hopeless. Yet too often, they will not extend that spirit to our fellow creatures. ~ Matthew Scully

Religious people claim that it's just the fundamentalists of each religion that cause problems. But there's got to be something wrong with the religion itself if those who strictly adhere to its most fundamental principles are violent bigots and sexists. ~ David G. McAfee

It [an ethical problem with in vitro fertilization] depends on whether you're talking ethics from the standpoint of some religious denomination or from just truly religious people. The Jewish or Catholic faiths, for example, have their own rules. But just religious people, who will make very devoted parents, have no problem with in vitro fertilization. ~ Patrick Steptoe

the word God is typically invoked to denote the all-encompassing and unanswerable source of authority governing what people can think, say, eat and wear, in what circumstances and with whom they can have sexual relations, how they must behave on specified days or weeks of the year, and so comprehensively on. The fact that different religions claim that their god or gods have different requirements in these respects should be evidence that religions are man-made and historically conditioned, but religious people think that this insight only applies to other people's religions, not their own ~ A.C. Grayling

Notorious sinners didn't kill Jesus. Religious people did. ~ Judah Smith

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature - an aspect that is as deep, important, and interesting as sexuality or language (which we study intensely). Here's another treasonous thought: If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. That's the topic of the final chapter. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people. ~ Doris Egan

Religious people are forced to perform mental gymnastics to reconcile real life with their delusions. When Christianity, Islam and the rest of the world religions finally have gone the way of Zeus, they will leave behind a legacy of case studies for students of abnormal psychology. ~ Al Stefanelli

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists. ~ Robert Winston

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people? ~ Karen Armstrong

God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Those people who want to express their religious beliefs on public property should enjoy the same rights that we provide to those protesting the war in Iraq. ~ Ernest Istook

There is no limit to what God can do through us if we are a yielded and purified people. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Let's not be intimidated by secular people who disparage Christian involvement in politics. ~ Joel Hunter

Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the "imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately the God delusion possesses adults. A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence and such delusions ask for trouble because disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasonable argument. Most religious people are very decent and nice But in a sense they have brought religious extremism on the world by teaching people the virtues of unquestioned faith. ~ Richard Dawkins

When it comes to religion, we're not two sides of the same coin, and you don't get to put your unreason up on the same shelf with my reason. Your stuff has to go over there, on the shelf with Zeus and Thor and the Kraken, with the stuff that is not evidence-based, stuff that religious people never change their mind about, no matter what happens. ~ Bill Maher

From my observations, it would seem that the core message of most major religions is right, just and pure. For this reason I can not help but conclude that evil acts committed by religious people are committed not because of their religion, but in spite of it. ~ Derek R. Audette

The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We talked about phonies. We talked about truth. We talked about gangsters; we talked about business. We talked about the nice poor people who went to the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards who didn't. We talked about religious people who had perversions. We talked about a lot of things.
We got drunk. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

People whom live in a world dominated by science and technology are losing belief in God and turning away from religion. Science eliminated the traditions that formerly made living an art form including the rain celebration of spring and traditional harvest festivals. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

All the rainbow banners were still there; the storm [Katrina] had left them intact. Interesting that the gay and bawdy sections of town were the parts least damaged, since some of the so-called religious people were claiming this to be God's punishment for our sinful ways. Perhaps they believed in a god of poor planning. ~ J.M. Redmann

People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Awe is not a very comfortable standpoint for many people ... Hence, all about us today, we see avoidance of awe-by burying ourselves in materialist science, for example or in absolutist religious positions; or by locking ourselves into systems, whether corporate, familial, or consumerist; or by stupefying ourselves with drugs. ~ Kirk J. Schneider

You can make a story mean anything Meoraq. But that's the think with you religious people, isn't it? God is this glorious intangibility, so no proof becomes proof just by how you spin it. ~ R. Lee Smith

I do believe that nice religious people make the world safe for extremists by teaching us that faith is a virtue, that there's something good about holding beliefs without any substantiating evidence, that you believe because you believe. Once you buy into that, then the door is opened to extremists who defend their extremism by saying, 'Oh well, it's my faith, you can't touch it, you can't criticise my faith, I don't even need to defend it because faith is faith.' ~ Richard Dawkins

We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

It doesn't hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I've actually made comedy out of it. I've made light of that. ~ Richard Dawkins

Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem, for purely religious purposes, of course, to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate. ~ Rudyard Kipling

It is a dreadful thing when you see religious people blundering out of one dishonor into another; they have not believed in the power of our Lord to make them blameless. The lives of some professing Christians are a series of stumbles; they are never quite down, and yet they are seldom on their feet. This is not a fit thing for a believer; he is invited to walk with God, and by faith he can attain to steady perseverance in holiness; and he ought to do so. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor. ~ Edward Gibbon

Do not make your mind a dumping ground for other people's garbage. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

It's when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I'm afraid that's what's going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, "Oh, it's not really religion." I mean they know they're lying, and yet they're the religious people. There's something wrong there. ~ Octavia Butler

This type of rhetoric is all too common among secularists on the left. They paint a false dichotomy between religion and science. They say that religious people are anti-science, because science makes God irrelevant - therefore, religious people want to stop scientific progress. They point to the fact that many religious people are skeptical about the theory of evolution - as though skepticism of a scientific finding were in and of itself unscientific. ~ Ben Shapiro

I think most religious people experience just as much doubt as they do faith; they just don't admit it. (13) ~ Elna Baker

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. ~ Karen Armstrong

it may sound strange, but I think atheists are the most religious people in the world. ~ Colin Dodds

Contrary to all the blather we here about the unique goodness of the American people or our religious heritage or anything else, the one thing that set this country apart from all others was the Bill of Rights. ~ Harry Browne

Religious people of any serious kind made her nervous: they were like men in raincoats who might or might not be flashers. ~ Margaret Atwood

By the age of fifteen, I had convinced myself that nobody could give a reasonable explanation of what he meant by the word 'God' and that it was therefore as meaningless to assert a belief as to assert a disbelief in God. Though this, in a general way, has remained my position ever since, I have always avoided unnecessarily to offend other people holding religious belief by displaying my lack of such belief, or even stating my lack of belief, if I was not challenged. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbors. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Their latest label for religious people is "American Taliban." The left loves it. It's meant to denigrate Christians as potential threats to world peace (although the greatest threats of the last century, Nazism and communism, were both secular). ~ Ben Shapiro

The First Amendment is now being used by the secularists of our day as a cattle prod to herd conservative religious people out of the public life of the nation and into, as others have put it, a religious ghetto. ~ Pat Swindall

I don't want to be religious, I want to be spiritual. Anybody can be religious. Some people jog religiously. You don't want to be that, you want to be spiritual. You want to have a relationship with God as opposed to doing what everyone else does. ~ Lauryn Hill

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future. ~ Richard Rohr

In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore. ~ Peter Mullan

So, according to the religious, you can only be good if you're scared of the consequences of being bad? Strange, I thought people were good because they care about each other? ~ David Alan Harvey

People who are starving and dressed in rags don't want to hear someone read a list of propositional "good news." They want to see the good news in action. The church doesn't hold revival meetings and call it a day - we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, dig wells, and staff medical clinics. Social action isn't an optional part of evangelism; it is evangelism. This is an important correction to the overspirituality that dominated evangelical Christianity just a generation ago. But the both/and of holistic mission still misses the heart of Jesus if we don't see that the church needs the poor as much as the poor need the church. Jesus didn't embrace the poor only because he pitied them or because he knew he had the resources to help them. Jesus embraced the poor because they were rushing into the kingdom ahead of the scribes and Pharisees - those who called themselves God's people. Jesus welcomed people who knew poverty because they were ready to receive what he had to offer. Religious people, he said, could learn something from them. Our spiritual lives are linked to the material conditions of our life. When we feel like we don't need much materially, we often have trouble remembering why we need God. We comfortable Americans can go through an entire day without thinking of God. But Jesus gave the poor more than food to eat and relief from their sickness. He restored them to God's beloved community. ~ Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

The more people come together, the more borders will be opened and people and opinions get together, the more unrenouncable tolerance will be a fundamental part of our social life. Without tolerance there is no religious liberty, no freedom of conscience and no freedom of thought. ~ Thomas Klestil

Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people. ~ Thomas A. Edison

The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians. ~ Rodney Stark

As for basic jokes about sex and even my religious stuff, I don't find any problems with that, even if I'm gigging in the Bible Belt, because religious people don't come and see me. ~ Jim Jefferies

The world is not composed of religious and non-religious people. It is composed rather of religious people who have differing ultimate concerns, different gods, and who respond to the Living God in different ways. ~ Ronald H. Nash

As long as religious people are well dressed, well fed, and well cared for, words about being in solidarity with the poor will remain pious words more likely to evoke good feelings than creative actions. As long as we are doing well what others are doing better and more efficiently, we can hardly expect to be considered the salt of the earth or the light of the world. In short, as long as we avoid displacement, we will miss the compassionate life to which our Lord calls us. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences - all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. ~ Richard Rohr

I don't care if religious people consider me amoral because I lack their beliefs in God. I do however care deeply about efforts to turn religious beliefs into law and those efforts benefit greatly from the conviction that individually and collectively we cannot be good without God. ~ Wendy Kaminer

The most rabidly religious people are the most rabidly evil. ~ Juliana Hatfield

It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it? ~ John Shelby Spong

Here in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for everybody. ~ Karen Armstrong

It is the left that uses the clubs of race and class to attack those on the right; it is the left that labels religious people and traditional values people rubes and simpletons, ~ Ben Shapiro

I wonder either their God has turned old, sick or died, because even the religious people no more believe in shit. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

A few years before his death in 1934 the great Algerian Sheikh, Ahmad al-'Alawi, became friendly with a Frenchman, Dr. Carret, who had been treating him for various minor ailments. One day Carrett tried to explain his agnosticism to the Sheikh, adding, however, that what most surprised him was that people who did claim to be religious 'should be able to go on attaching importance to this earthly life'. After a pause, the Sheikh said to him: 'It is a pity that you will not let your spirit rise above yourself. But whatever you may say and whatever you may imagine, you are nearer to God than you think'. In this confused age in which we now find ourselves there may be many a believer who is a kafir under the skin, and many a kafir who is closer than he knows to the God in whom he thinks he does not believe.

It is important to be aware of these paradoxes because the distrust of religion - or at least of 'organized religion' - which is so widespread in the Western world, derives less from intellectual doubts than from a critical judgement of the way in which religious people are seen to behave. The agnostic does not concern himself with the supernatural dimensions of religion, let alone with ultimate truth. He sees only that part of the iceberg which is visible above the surface, and he judges this to be misshapen. The whole sad story is summed up in the wise child's prayer: 'Lord, please make good people religious and make religious people good'. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

Many people are trying to remove religion from public life. Under the banner of pluralism, cultural and political leaders are seeking to push all talk about God out of the public arena. ~ Charles Colson

Religious people know deep down that that is the most vulnerable area of their lives, and when others question it, they are liable to hit out and feel insulted. You know it is absolutely without proof, yet people still commit themselves totally to this belief. They cannot refute it because it is so central to their lives. ~ John Hurt

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter. ~ Edvard Munch

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail. ~ Sam Harris

It is absurd to quote religion or God or religious doctrines to render the people as lowest castes. ~ Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

The new spirituality will also base itself on a third very large spiritual understanding, which is that life is eternal. Most religious people claim to believe that, but very few people actually live as if that were true. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

The religious situation of our people is very unstable. This is because of the lack of religious teachers and other dedicated people. As a result Fiji Indians are like an unsteady boat in a whirlpool. ~ Totaram Sanadhya

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them," Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes not only with the return of the prodigal son, but also with the resentful elder son. It must have come as a shock to these dutiful religious people. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Religious beliefs ... should never be an excuse to treat people badly. ~ Zach Wahls