Rising Above Religion Quotes

People live their lives now in fear of the afterlife, and in the process, they forget that they are still alive! And for as long as you are alive, my friend, you have the chance to break free from any bondages whatsoever, that your fellow man has put you in. Your passion should not come from any one religion; your passion should come and should be fueled by, the fact that you are human and that you have been given this life to leave your stamp of beauty and of progress upon mankind! ~ C. JoyBell C.

No man was born in chains; it is their fellow man who has put them in chains, and at any given time, every single man and woman has the absolute right to break free from those chains of any nature and of any form! It is not God who has put you in any sort of bondage! It is your fellow man who puts you in bondage in the name of God! ~ C. JoyBell C.

When human life lay foul for all to see
Upon the earth, crushed by the burden of religion,
Religion which from heaven's firmament
Displayed its face, its ghastly countenance,
Lowering above mankind, the first who dared
Raise mortal eyes against it, first to take
His stand against it, was a man of Greece.
He was not cowed by fables of the gods
Or thunderbolts or heaven's threatening roar,
But they the more spurred on his ardent soul
Yearning to be the first to break apart
The bolts of nature's gates and throw them open.
Therefore his lively intellect prevailed
And forth he marched, advancing onwards far
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world,
And voyaged in mind throughout infinity,
Whence he victorious back in triumph brings
Report of what can be and what cannot
And in what manner each thing has a power
That's limited, and deep-set boundary stone.
Wherefore religion in its turn is cast
Beneath the feet of men and trampled down,
And us his victory has made peers of heaven. ~ Lucretius

Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is "underneath" rather than "above" everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside. One might say that if religion is the opium of the people, the Hindus have the inside dope. What is more, no Hindu can realize that he is God in disguise without seeing at the same time that this is true of everyone and everything else. In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself. ~ Alan W. Watts

It's also worth pointing out that Israel is not solely comprised of Jewish people and is not the defining representation of the global Jewish community. There are many non-Jewish Israelis – about 25% of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish and mostly Muslim with some Christians – and of course there are many non-Israeli Jews, including American Jews for example.
However, the above statistics are either underreported or lost in the paranoiac thinking so common to those who assess such disparate subjects as Jewish people, Zionism, Judaism, Israel and the Holocaust as if they are all one and the same and inextricably linked. The all-too-real problem of rising anti-Semitism around the world is unfortunately often a result of anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli beliefs. This phenomenon can usually be traced to the blurring of the lines or general confusion in gentiles and their apparent inability in the main to differentiate between the global Jewish community and the distinctly different and separate nation of Israel. ~ James Morcan

So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed
In serpent, inmate bad! and toward Eve
Addressed his way: not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape
And lovely; never since of serpent-kind
Lovelier ... ~ John Milton

Everyone who's ever been jealous because it's my face in the magazines and not theirs. Every person who can't believe or accept that someone can reach my level of success without being a total prick. Trust me, it's not the lies that hurt people. It's the willingness of everyone else to believe them. And then there are those who come out of the woodwork to back your accuser because it gives them the spotlight for three seconds. They can't stand the fact that you've risen above your past and that they have no excuse for never rising above theirs. In their minds, you need to be taken down a notch and they need to be raised a few, off the lies they tell about you. Because in the end, they know you, they've seen the real you, and by backing your accusers, they make other people think that maybe they were close to you – at least that's what they claim. It's a sick world and I'm disgusted with it. (Aiden) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Nietzsche ... argues that all that passes in the life of a society is ephemeral and banausic except for the presence of great personalities, of men like Goethe ... who seem to forge their own destinies, who seem to move unhampered by those burdens of existence which keep most men from rising above the vicissitudes of their daily toil. ~ John Carroll

In the past, most wars were motivated by the idea of nationhood. Today, however, wars are incited above all using religion as an excuse. ~ Shimon Peres

Many people of our time reason along the following lines: The religions - or the differing spiritual perspectives within a given religion - contradict one another, therefore they cannot all be right; consequently none is true. This is exactly as if one said: Every individual claims to be "I," thus they cannot all be right; consequently none is "I." This example shows up the absurdity of the antireligious argument, by recalling the real analogy between the inevitable external limitation of religious language and the no less inevitable limitation of the human ego. To reach this conclusion, as do the rationalists who use the above argument, amounts in practice to denying the diversity of the knowing subjects as also the diversity of aspects in the object to be known. It amounts to pretending that there are neither points of view nor aspects; that is to say, that there is but a single man to see a mountain and that the mountain has but a single side to be seen. The error of the subjectivist and relativist philosophers is a contrary one. According to them, the mountain would alter its nature according to whoever viewed it; at one time it might be a tree and at another a stream.

[No activity without Truth] - Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 3, No. 4. (Autumn 1969) ~ Frithjof Schuon

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fans love Sosa for his exuberance, for the kisses he blows to his mother, wife and four children. He is Slammin' Sammy, a fairy-tale figure rising from poverty in the Dominican Republic to the 55th floor above Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. ~ Bill Dedman

Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccinations. But the Mohammaden religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since its votaries have been subject, above all the peoples of all other creeds, to this form of madness. ~ Winston S. Churchill

There must appear a spiritual and moral leadership rising above economic and political situations. Governments in both their domestic and foreign policies appeal for popular support by promises of material gain. We cannot make peace by mere appeal to greed. We must give the peoples of the world something to live for as well as something to live on. ~ John Haynes Holmes

On the subject of pornography, Lord MacCaulay believes that term only suitable for material lacking artistic merit, being designed solely for the purpose of sexual arousal. His own collection of books, sketches and cards (some more dog-eared than others) he deems akin to the Venus de Milo, rising above the common fodder of aids to 'relief'. ~ Emmanuelle De Maupassant

The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment....The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending people joineth them in a common cause.' The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. 'Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions...that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.' A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: 'Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.' But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; 'the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people;' and 'Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?' What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. 'It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned gove ~ Will Durant

Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all things there stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of accident, the heaven of wantonness". ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The greatest tragedy in your life will not be the death of a loved one or a natural disaster; those things hurt like hell and devastate to the core. But loss like that is part of life. What's not necessary and is therefore most tragic is the demise of your truest identity, your dying before you're dead, the moments when you let the words and judgments of others define who you are instead of rising above that pain to be the person you were meant to be. No matter what has happened in your past, you are still capable of becoming a better version of who you are at this moment. Think right. Believe the voice inside of you that speaks the truth. You are a divine marvel. Act like it. Live like it. ~ Toni Sorenson

The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being
interfered with by prayers. ~ Bret Harte

In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it or he would be obviously below it. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below. ~ James Hogg

I thank you, Wilhelm, for your heartfelt sympathy, for your well-intentioned advice, but beg you to be quiet. Let me stick it out. Blessedly exhausted as I am, I have strength enough to carry through. I honor religion, you know that, I feel it is a staff for many weary souls, refreshment for many a one who is pining away. But--can it be, must it be, the same thing for everyone? If you look at the great world, you see thousands for whom it wasn't, thousands for whom it will not be the same, preached or unpreached, and must it then be the same for me? Does not the son of God Himself say that those would be around Him whom the Father had given Him? But if I am not given? If the Father wants to keep me for Himself, as my heart tells me?--I beg you, do not misinterpret this, do not see mockery in these innocent words. What I am laying before you is my whole soul; otherwise I would rather have kept silent, as I do not like to lose words over things that everyone knows as little about as I do. What else is it but human destiny to suffer out one's measure, drink up one's cup?--And if the chalice was too bitter for the God from heaven on His human lips, why should I boast and pretend that it tastes sweet to me? And why should I be ashamed in the terrible moment when my entire being trembles between being and nothingness, since the past flashes like lightning above the dark abyss of the future and everything around me is swallowed up, and the world perishes with me?--Is that not the vo ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

An ear-splitting screech pierced the silence, followed by another, striking his ears like metal against a hollow bell. The woosh woosh of wind being displaced brought Andrew's attention skyward, and a glacial gust of paralyzing terror raced up his spine. The creature opened its mouth, and a blazing shaft of fire bellowed from above. Andrew barely had enough time to back beneath an awning for protection. Egnatious and Sebastian dove to the side while Firen sidestepped her impending doom, raising the katana in challenge.
The screeching returned, except now the howls were coming from every direction.
Firen's chest heaved. "Did you see that?" she asked, her stormy eyes glinting with rapture and daring as she held her katana out, preparing for the next attack.
"Did I see the dragon?" Sebastian asked, hysteria dangerously rising to the surface. He stood and brushed himself off. "Yes, I bloody well did see that enormous, scaly, fire-breathing dragon. ~ Laura Kreitzer

You didn't choose God. He chose you. When you stop feeling hurt by everyone and plotting your comeback, he has some very important things he wants you to accomplish with your life. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. ~ Albert Einstein

Over and over these organizations tell America that family, above all, is what Christianity is about. Devotion to one's family is, indeed, a wonderful thing. Yet it is hardly something to brag about. For all except the most pathologically self-absorbed, love for one's parents, spouse, and children comes naturally. Jesus did not make it his business to affirm these ties; he didn't have to. Jews feel them, Buddhists feel them, Confucians and Zoroastrians and atheists feel them. Christianity is not about reinforcing such natural bonds and instinctive sentiments. Rather, Christianity is about challenging them and helping us to see all of humankind as our family. It seems clear that if Jesus had wanted to affirm the "traditional family" in the way that Pat Robertson claims, he would not have lived the way he did. ~ Bruce Bawer

Cause and effect is the basis of my education, leading me to an essence far more profound than any rule of societal conditioning. ~ Ka Chinery

The people who are rising, they're super ambitious. They have relationships with people above them. They have relationships, hierarchical, sort of people below them. A lot of people do not have relationships horizontally. And there's a lot of people who reach high political offices, but who are weirdly lonely, weirdly lacking in intimacy skills. ~ Mark Shields

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down - from high flat temples - in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan. ~ Dashiell Hammett

To sustain moral behavior, people need more than simply a list of rules. They need to be people who have a comprehensive view of the universe - a religion, or an ideology that functions like a religion - that stands behind those rules. Only such a comprehensive view can explain the rules (supplying answers to the crucial "ethical content questions" mentioned above), organize the rules (so we know how to handle difficult ethical judgments), justify the rules (making them seem plausible, and therefore worthy of obedience), and sacralize the rules (making them sacred and truly moral, rather than merely prudent advice). Without a comprehensive view of the universe, no body of ethical rules remains coherent for long. ~ Greg Forster

Countless times, I have imagined A. rising through the rivers of this land, to the surface of Florida to be found again, pulled into the air by new hands. The possibilities are endless, but most often I imagine him found by children. Above him, the sky shimmers and undulates blue through transparent springwater. Then four small brown hands break the surface and pull him into the air and into their excited and frightened vocabularies. The delicate bones of their arms and ribs absorb his voice, shattering their knowledge of what is possible. ~ Rhonda Riley

There was something about the star, rising above the stable, that still pulled a crowd in from the fields. ~ Chris Cleave

Sometimes you only get one chance to rewrite the qualities of the character you played in a person's life story. Always take it. Never let the world read the wrong version of you. ~ Shannon L. Alder