c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Santería was traditionally an unacknowledged and underappreciated aspect of what it meant to be Cuban. Yet the syncretism between the Yoruban religion that the slaves brought to the island and the Catholicism of their masters is, in my opinion, the underpinning of Cuban culture. Every artistic realm--music, theater, literature, etc.--owes a huge debt to santería and the slaves who practiced it and passed it on, largely secretively, for generations.
— Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Acts 3:19
— Lailah Gifty Akita
You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.
— Arthur Stanley Eddington, Science and the Unseen World
Without radical humility that is expressed in gestures of adoration and in sacred rituals, no friendship with God is possible. Silence manifests this connection in an obvious way. True Christian silence makes itself sacred silence first so as to become silence of communion.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Authentic religion is not a theology test. It's a love test.
— Oliver Thomas, 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You:
Today, some priests treat the Eucharist with the utmost contempt. They see the Mass as a talkative banquet where Christians faithful to the teaching of Jesus, divorced-and-remarried persons, men and women in an adulterous situation, unbaptized tourists who participate in the Eucharistic celebrations of the large anonymous crowds can indiscriminately have access to the Body and Blood of Christ.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Some priests unfaithful to the "memory" of Jesus insist more on the festive aspect and the fraternal dimension of the Mass than on the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The importance of interior dispositions and the necessity of reconciling ourselves with God by agreeing to let ourselves be purified by the sacrament of confession are no longer in fashion today.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Why are men so noisy during the liturgies while Christ's prayer was silent? The words of the Son of God come from the heart, and the heart is silent. Why do we not know how to speak with a silent heart? The heart of Jesus does not speak. It radiates with love because its language comes from the divine depths.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
The blessing has been so significatn that we have continued our satiric tact [sic] with an additional objective in mind -- keeping the suits and haircuts away. Whenever a promising movement of the Holy Spirit begins nowadays, one of the first things that happens is that the agents, businessmen, and other assorted handlers move in so that they might straighten out certain unmarketable "blemishes" in order to take the show on the road. And when a promising ministry hits the big time, the unfortunate people in it are made twice as much sons of hell as their promoters. It is therefore our resolve to stay as unmarketable as we can. If we ever get invited to the Great Black Tie Banquet of Evangelicalism, we want everyone there to be braced for the moment when we, on a prearranged signal, throw our dinner rolls at Pat Robertson
— Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking
Edward believes that all religions are cousins at heart and begin in the right spirit but then they are corrupted by the desire for power.
— Brian Doyle
What Christians see, or claim to see, in Genesis 1-3 changed as the church itself changed from a dissident Jewish sect to a popular movement persecuted by the Roman government, and changed further as this movement increasingly gained members throughout Roman society, until finally even the Roman emperor himself converted to the new faith and Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire.
— Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity
So many people will be lost to the fires of hell and ultimately experience the loss of their spiritual life because of this completion of pride, which is lust. Heaven is not about the physical; it’s about the spiritual, the completion of love, which is the opposite of lust. Hell, on the other hand, is all about the physical; it’s all about how you and I deal with the challenges we face daily here in this physical world. Do we lust after the pleasures of the flesh, or do we respond to the physical in a spiritual manner? That’s the greatest judgmental factor.
— Nicholas M. Cuono Sr., This Is His House and These Are His Rules
Christ is certainly distressed to see and to hear priests and bishops, who ought to be protecting the integrity of the teaching of the Gospel and of doctrine, multiply words and writings that weaken the rigor of the Gospel by their deliberately ambiguous, confused statements.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Many fervent Christians who are moved by the Passion and death of Christ on the Cross no longer have the strength to weep or to utter a cry of pain to the priests and bishops who make their appearance as entertainers and set themselves up as the main protagonists of the Eucharist. These believers tell us nevertheless: "We do not want to gather with men around a man! We want to see Jesus! Show him to us in the silence and humility of your prayer!
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
There is a great risk that Christians may become idolaters if they lose the meaning of silence. Our words inebriate us; they confine us to what is created. Bewitched and imprisoned by the noise of human speech, we run the risk of designing worship to our specifications, a god in our own image. Words bring with them the temptation of the golden calf! Only silence leads man beyond words, to the mystery, to worship in spirit and in truth. Silence is a form of mystagogy; it brings us into the mystery without spoiling it.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Now, celebrations become tiring because they unfold in noisy chattering. The liturgy is sick. The most striking symptom of this sickness is perhaps the omnipresence of the microphone. It has become so indispensable that one wonders how priests were able to celebrate before it was invented.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
The demons of animism were usually hostile to man, but it seems as though man had more confidence in himself in those days than later on.
— Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
.It is asking a great deal of a man, who has learnt to regulate his everyday affairs in accordance with the rules of experience and with due regard to reality, that he should entrust precisely what affects him most nearly to the care of an authority which claims as its prerogative freedom from all the rules of rational thought.
— Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses ... for in him also Christ 'vere latitat' - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
The story was told, generation by generation, in song and in story, until time misted it into myth and legend. But some believed, as legends brought comfort.
— Nora Roberts, Bay of Sighs
How sick in your mind and your soul to be scared of my voice and my words.
— The Cure
Saint-worship is not the same as hero-worship; it is a much less dangerous thing than hero-worship. For hero-worship generally means the absorption or transmutation of some part, at any rate, of one's own original ideas of goodness under the heat and hypnotism of some strong personality. But saint-worship, especially when it is a worship of saints whom we know little or nothing about, is simply the worship of that tradition of goodness in which the saint's name has been embalmed; and into that empty mould our own natural idealism can much more easily be poured.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Glass Walking Stick
I will complain, yet praise;I will bewail, approve:And all my sowre-sweet dayesI will lament, and love.
— George Herbert, The Temple: The Poetry of George Herbert
Is there any holy beings like human beings?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Ultimately, loneliness is not the experience of lacking but the experience of living. It is part and parcel of the human condition, and, unless a person is resolved, it can only be a matter of time before it resurfaces, often with a vengeance. On this account, loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of meaning from the universe, an absence that is all the more glaring in modern societies which have sacrificed traditional and religious structures of meaning on the thin altar of truth.
— Neel Burton, For Better For Worse: Should I Get Married?
Religion lives not in dogma, but utterly within the virtues of love and self-sacrifice. Without those, there is no future I can bear to stand, nor hope for the continuance of God's creation. It is not blasphemy to say that the work of Jesus the redeemer was and is to break the chains of the realms of darkness. And set free the creature from the power of sin.
— Warren Ellis, Frankenstein's Womb
As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent.
— C.S. Lewis
Some people live by the rules of karma. They are the best, the strongest. Some people live with the need for religion. They are the judgmental ones, the haters. They justify their hate, their violence, in the name of their chosen religion and God. Others live without the rules of karma, and without religion, just as animals do.
— Robert  Black
Clouds are just nature's stepping stones to the heavens.
— Anthony T. Hincks
The 330 million gods and goddesses of the Hindu culture act as placebo for the masses, just like other gods of other cultures do.
— Abhijit Naskar, 7 Billion Gods: Humans Above All
Many races as well as cultural influences of men of all kinds have mixed into any man. To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory.
— Richard Feynman
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, The Vagina Monologues
The oft-cited charge that belief in God and religion has led to more wars and evil than anything else is as untrue as it is widely believed. Secular movements in the twentieth century alone killed and enslaved more people than any other movement in any century in history.
— Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph
Religion is the record of spiritual events. Through the repetition of past occurrences religion can give us a close approximation of the event itself, but it is not the same thing as a spiritual experience.
— Ashavan
While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.
— George Washington, Writings
Yet the great “Why?” always at the center of the little “whats” and “hows” that makes religions into mythologies is often stronger in dead temples than in living.
— Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The City Of Trembling Leaves
Seldom do we embrace a new idea, especially one of a religious nature.
— Eli Of Kittim, The Little Book of Revelation: The First Coming of Jesus at the End of Days
How can a warrior fight without his weapon?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
For what is truth? In matters of relogion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.
— Oscar Wilde
The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that ‘black hole’ is infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions—nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze.With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.
— Flaubert Gustave
...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on...
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
You'd better pray your ass off before you climb in bed tonight. You better pray the Lord finds you some other line of business, cuz the folks you're working for right now is goddamn devils. Swindling, thieving, crooked goddamn devils.
— Rachel Autumn Deering, Husk
I would call celebrity worship a new form of religious culture, fans may not even know the fallen celebrit[ies], yet they draw quite a bit of meaning from them." - Gary Laderman, a professor of religion at Emory University
— J.D. Reed, Stairway to Heaven: The Final Resting Places of Rock's Legends
The Providence granted me with the ability to think, and thinking unveiled to me that, sadly, there was no providence.
— Javier Enríquez Serralde
In the years preceding the Civil War in America, Christian ministers wrote nearly half of all defenses of slavery.
— Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
He started to wonder if maybe they had been raptured while he was in school. He always worried the Lord would show up when he wasn't around. Or when he was on the toilet, taking care of a number two.
— Rachel Autumn Deering, Husk
Cleanliness begins with the love for godliness
— Lailah Gifty Akita
By diverting the Dionysian impulse into special rites on special days, the orgy kept it under control, preventing it from surfacing in more insidious and perfidious ways. More than that, it transformed it into an invigorating and liberating—and, in that much, profoundly religious—celebration of life and the life force. It permitted people to escape from their artificial and restricted social roles to regress into a more authentic state of nature, which modern psychologists have associated with the Freudianid or unconscious. It appealed most to marginal groups, since it set aside the usual hierarchies of man over woman, master over slave, patrician over commoner, rich over poor, and citizen over foreigner. In short, it gave people a much-needed break—like modern holidays, but cheaper and more effective.
— Neel Burton, For Better For Worse: Should I Get Married?
Just as Prometheus delivered stolen fire to man, so Eve, and the serpent, delivered man into self-consciousness, setting him up, were it not for his short lifespan, as rival to God. At the same time, man’s self-consciousness removed him from nature into a life of toil, doubt, fear, guilt, shame, blame, enmity, loneliness, and frailty—and the product of this separation, the fruit and flower of this exile, is, of course, culture. ‘God,’ said the writer Victor Hugo, ‘made only water, but man made wine.
— Neel Burton, For Better For Worse: Should I Get Married?
The Holy One is a flame.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I should like the woman I choose to be very honest, generous, and to have a sincere faith in God, rather than mindlessly following the rules.
— Melanie Dickerson, The Beautiful Pretender
The only true religion is the grace to act right.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
It is better to be slave to the Saviour than satan.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Whoever sees the Saviour, the light of life, shall be satisfied in spirit.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The truest knowledge is the fear of God.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectivelyy.
— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
People think we didn't have theatres in Scotland for centuries because the Church suppressed them. Well, perhaps. But you could also argue that we had theatres in every town and village in the land: they were called kirks, and every week folk packed in to see a one-man show about life, death and the universe.
— James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack
Choosing comfort over knowledge is a sign of a weak mind..
— Danilo Vukovljak
Whatever we may be or not be to others, to ourselves we are always just ourselves.
— Marty Rubin
The third and, given due consideration, most probable of all my theorems, is that life is ordered by the principles of some religion so peculiar and obscure it has no followers, and none may fathom it, nor know the rituals by which to court its favor.
— Alan Moore, Voice of the Fire
No one cultivates in a stony-ground, instead he cultivates in a soft-rich ground. Do not expect people to invest in you if you're a lazy type.
— Godspower Oparaugo, The Power of Decision: Your Destiny Lies in Your Decisions
The Witch 2015, has shown how religion make us, and where does this shit put us. How just by one religion a lot of people live in the lie!” ― Deyth Banger
— Deyth Banger
Meditation on the Holy Scripture is life to your soul.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The path of prayer is way of purity.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The spirit of Christ dwells in a holy body.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The wonders of the holy wonder is timeless mystery.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Mediate on the word of God day and night, then be careful to write the sacred words on your heart. And find grace to obey it.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
If you meditate on the Holy Scriptures, you mind shall me on the Jesus Christ, the Saviour,
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures help us to build a strong trust in the truth of God.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
You said their prayer – is this the religion you believe in, then?" „I believe in them all.” Vin frowned. „None of them contradict each other?” Sazed smiled. "Oh, often and frequently they do. But, I respect the truths behind them all – and I believe in the need for each one to be remembered
— Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
Walking to the train station I Wikipedia Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the man Hizb-ut-Tahrir refuse to accept as Islamic State's leader.I discover he is only one year older than me. I'm hit with that melancholy you get when you realise someone around your age has achieved so much more than you and you mightn't ever catch up.
— John Safran, Depends What You Mean By Extremist
The only difference between fiction and religion is that people don't kill themselves over fiction.
— Ahmed Mostafa
The first thing fading is your beautythe least trustworthy is your minddown here on this earthnothing's of any worthin the endin the end
— Fabian W. Williges, Far from perfect: songs & poems
The conflicts between science and religion still remain in this day and age, because though most people understand what science means, they do not have a clue what religion means – and they do not even have a clue that they do not have a clue.
— Abhijit Naskar
The truth will set you free, they say, but believe me, nothing will set you free.
— Ava Farmehri, Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang
The first thing fading is your beautythe least trustworthy is your minddown here on this earthnothing's of any worth—in the end
— Fabian W. Williges, Far from perfect: songs & poems
I was reborn...as ME!
— Anthony T. Hincks
Religion springs from man's feeling of inferiority.
— Ahmed Mostafa
Even demons can fall in love.
— Anthony T. Hincks
The religion/ politics dichotomy is a false one. It isn't that politics has no role; it's that politics is simply inseparable from the Abrahamic religions. Religion is politics. That was the case during the Barbary confrontation in 1786, and it's the case with the Israel-Palestine conflict now. Throughout history, religion has simply been an excuse looking for a conflict.
— Ali A. Rizvi, The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason
If what is soft wears down the hard, how much the more so shall the words of the Torah, which are as hard as iron, hollow out my heart, which is flesh and blood.
— Akiba Ben Joseph
Let our religions unite us for human kindness rather than dividing us on what we believe. Eid Mubarak
— Hockson Floin
Har' icyumba satani atemerewe kujyamo n'umutima wawe kereste wowe umwemereye
— Dr Paul Gitwaza
I don't understand why did jesus give life to the dead when they have to die again?
— Tarif Naaz
I don't understand why did jesus give life to the dead when they had to die again?
— Tarif Naaz
Dad?" Jesus asked."Yes, son?" God asked."Why are people so scared of dying?" Jesus asked."Because they believe that they only get one life and then they die," God said."But dad, nothing ever dies," Jesus said."You know that and I know that, but sadly, they don't know that," God said and the two of them then looked down towards the Earth.
— Anthony T. Hincks
God doesn't punish us.We do that all by ourselves.
— Anthony T. Hincks
God hasn't given up on man.He just doesn't understand him.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Liberty is my religion and Humans are my God.
— Abhijit Naskar, I Am The Thread: My Mission
God is nature’s anti-dote to misery.
— Abhijit Naskar, I Am The Thread: My Mission
For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts. Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that.
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Buddha guides my thoughts, but it's up to me to guide my life.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Buddha gives me the strength to bring my words to life and he gives me the strength to share my love of life.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Divinity retains the appearance of insight, when in reality it celebrates ignorance. Its tenets are so much clay, and when the clay sets, it becomes dogma.
— Anthony  Ryan, Tower Lord
It is very difficult to convince a person to come out of his conversative shell, unless he doesn't feel discomfort there.
— Tarif Naaz
In the movies, God is an actor just like everyone else.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.
— Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
My dad always says that kindness is our religion and if we treat everybody the way we would like to be treated, the world would be a better place.
— Firoozeh Dumas, It Ain't So Awful, Falafel
... even though we belong to three different religions. We are alike in so many more ways than we are different.
— Firoozeh Dumas, It Ain't So Awful, Falafel
Sacred service is sacrifice.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
But here God didn't come. We were all on our own.
— Art Spiegelman, Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
God's saving offer of life and love is available for all; but it cannot be separated from his judgement on evil, and his triumph over it.
— Stephen S. Smalley, The Revelation to John: A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Apocalypse
Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. ... "These Native Americans ... believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature." ... Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us try a similarly succinct summary of the beliefs of many Christians today: "These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died." describe Christianity this way. It's offensive. Believers would immediately argue that such a depiction fails to convey the symbolic meaning or the spiritual satisfaction of communion.
— James W. Loewen
God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do is subtly teach people that Jesus rescues us from God.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
In his last years Linacre gave up medicine for the Church and then for the first time read the gospels. On so doing he exclaimed, 'Either this is not the gospel or we are not Christians.
— Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom
I'm too young to be anything. I'm just a guy figuring stuff out, and when I've lived enough, I can decide what I believe... I follow the Golden Rule. I am a nice guy. I don't do shitty things to people. I keep it chill. And I am not in a rush to pick a God for the rest of my life. Who knows how long we will live? Just think about it. When we were born, there was no Internet. Now we can't do anything without it. Maybe tomorrow or twenty years from now, half of us will be living on Mars, and then what is God? All I am saying is no one know's about tomorrow's gods. Not me. Not you. None of us. And I choose not to go backwards, forget the old gods, let's wait and see what comes next.
— Laleh Khadivi, A Good Country
That was unthinkable, he said; all men believe in God, even those who reject Him. Of this he was absolutely sure; if ever he came to doubt it, his life would lose all meaning.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
They say, love God, for it is the greatest virtue. I say, love humans, for there is no greater virtue, no greater religion, than the love of humanity.
— Abhijit Naskar
Let your door stand open to receive Him, unlock your soul to Him, offer Him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace. Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light...
— Ambrose of Milan
But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Beneath the pseudo-scientific terminology one can in each case recognize a phantasy of which almost every element is to be found in phantasies which were already current in medieval Europe. The final, decisive battle of the Elect (be they the ‘Aryan race’ or the ‘proletariat’) against the hosts of evil (be they the Jews or the ‘bourgeoisie’); a dispensation on which the Elect are to be most amply compensated for all their sufferings by the joys of total domination or of total community or of both together; a world purified of all evil and in which history is to find its consummation - these ancient imaginings are with us still.
— Norman Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages
Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God?Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?
— Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
Sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting 'the gospel' is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn't safe, loving, or good. It doesn't make sense, it can't be reconciled, and so they say no.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
Christ is our Friend; He is also the Righteous King. God is our Father; He is also the Sovereign Lord. Christianity can be said to be both a religion and a relationship. You may often hear the cliché that it is not a religion, but a relationship only - which, I believe, is a bit too vague a statement - 'religion' has long had different meanings and implications depending on who you ask or where you are coming from. Honestly, it is sometimes the case that Christians like to think they are too cool and free and up-close and personal with God to be like other religions. Perhaps that could be argued, that could be the case, as it is written thus: 'You are no longer a slave to sin, but God's child.' So we might very well assert that Christianity is not at all some stale philosophy centered around legalistic guilt and empty rule-keeping, as the modernists so commonly define religion; although by other definitions we might as well be boasting that it is 'The Religion' simply by claiming that it is too real and too special to be deemed 'just another religion'.
— Criss Jami
The Buddha, Christ and Mohammed had to rely on God and karma and human priests for judgement; we don’t. We have data. We have algorithms. We have Guidance. God is now available as an application, on your mobile phone or in the cloud, twenty four seven, three sixty five.
— Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Numbercaste
The Faithful God called all believers into a sweet fellowship with his Son, Christ Jesus.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The Holy Scripture is Spirit-taught words.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
My prayer is that when I die, all of hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.
— CS Lewis
God never gave up on us.We did!
— Anthony T. Hincks
God believes in you. So why don't you?
— Anthony T. Hincks
Dad?" Jesus said."Yes son. What is it?" God replied."Why have you left the stars turned on. It's night time," Jesus asked."It's so that people can find their way home," God said."What do you mean?" Jesus asked his dad."Well" God started to say, "sometimes a person loses their way in life and when that happens all they have to do is look up at the stars and then they will find their way back home to me.""But, what about if it's daytime and there are no stars?" Jesus now asked."Then, I will send them a rainbow to show them the way," God told his son.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Dad!" Jesus yelled."Yes, son," God said."That star's light just went out," Jesus told his dad."Yes, I know," God replied."But, why?" Jesus asked."Sometimes, a man can become so self obsessed, that the devil seduces him with wealth, power and other worldly delights," God said."But aren't you worried that he will turn all the stars off?" Jesus now asked his dad.God smiled, "No, because for every star that goes out, I just put up another million or so."Jesus looked back at the night sky and sure enough, there were many more stars now. He smiled.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Only the Truth of God shall set you free from every falsehood.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Dad?" Jesus asked."Yes, son?" God asked."Why do people get sick?" Jesus asked."When they live, life is all about learning so that when the are ready, they can join us here," God said."But, doesn't it hurt?" Jesus asked."Yes, it does. But, to learn about life you have to learn of pain and suffering or else you don't learn what life is all about," God said."Will I suffer like that one day?" Jesus now asked his dad."Yes, because we all have to learn, and that includes me too," God replied sadly.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Man created religion in order to avoid god.
— Avaah Rayner
Now what is the will of God? That's the big question. You can't say the will of God is to disrespect your fellow man. You can't say the will of God is to disrespect His creations, and you can't say the will of God is to disrespect the planet that you live on. You can say you're anything [any religion], but if your disrespect comes in any of those three categories, you're not anything, you're whack. I think the principles of religion start from there. Then you get into man's interpretation and bookology.
— Chuck D, Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary, Vol. 1
For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.' 1 Kings 17:14
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I was vaguely aware that same of those around me thought that this pairing of explorations was contradictory and I was headed over a cliff, but I found it difficult to imagine that there could be a real conflict between scientific truth and spiritual truth. Truth is truth. Truth cannot disprove truth.
— Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
Does every christian obey Christ Jesus?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
love is depend on things ,which we need to use for survival from sex to religions
— faamin
No soul has the power to save. You can only tell others about the Saviour.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
An excerpt from:“Hypothetically Speaking”ByAnthony T. Hincks(A book about you and the world – coming soon!)If I was a savvy person, I would watch, and study mankind in order to find out where his weaknesses lay.Greed, for sure; vanity; mistrust; a tendency towards violence; fanaticism, and many other less than honorable traits and even some honorable ones which could also be used, and capitalized on.Then, once I had found his weaknesses I would act.I and some friends or family, not terms that I would usually use but ones that are more commonly used here on Earth, would start an empire.Months – Years - Millennium Who cares, for time is on my side, not yours!I would sow mistrust; magic; wisdom; knowledge, and start many religions.Why many religions?Because where would the fun be by just having one, when with a whole handful you can sow hatred; do unspeakable acts all in the name of religion. That’s a lot more fun, and, besides which, it suits my purposes.Innovation – Invention – Intelligence All of those things would come, but only at a time of my choosing.Decades would pass and then centuries. Wars would be fought. He against him. He against her. She against him. They against others.I tell you, watching something come to fruition is a hell of a lot of fun.
— Anthony T. Hincks
We are the children of the living God.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
A devout Christian, desire Jesus Christ.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
If we seek God first, we shall all other goodness.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The holy servants were separated, for the sake of Law of God.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The Holy Spirit reveals the Truth.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The Good News is the gospel of glad-tidings.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
To be able to think freely isn't a crime, it's a gift. A real privilege; one not enjoyed by a vast majority of people globally, unfortunately.
— Mamur Mustapha
Intolerance breeds hatred. Hatred creates divisions. Divisions destroy common grounds.
— Mamur Mustapha
In that context, I find theistic evolution, or BioLogos, to be by far the most scientifically consistent and spiritually satisfying of the alternatives. This position will not go out of style or be disproven by future scientific discoveries. It is intellectually rigorous, it provides answers to many otherwise puzzling questions, and it allows science and faith to fortify each other like two unshakable pillars, holding up a building called Truth.
— Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
I wonder when god will get a microchip?
— Anthony T. Hincks
The grace of redemption is better than riches.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
If there is knowledge we shall seek, we must search for the excellent knowledge of Christ Jesus.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Killing people in the name of religion does not make it religious.
— Youssef Ziedan, عزازيل
Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."Luke 11:52
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I think that 'God' would have a devil of a time if he was here on Earth.
— Anthony T. Hincks
As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free.
— Criss Jami
Now: unlike ourselves, the Father of Jesus loves men and women, not for what He finds in them, but for what lies within Himself. It is not because men and women are good that He loves them, nor only good men and women that He loves. It is because He is so unutterably good that He loves all persons, good and evil. ... He loves the loveless, the unloving, the unlovable. He does not detect what is congenial, appealing, attractive, and respond to it with His favor. In fact, He does not respond at all. The Father of Jesus is a source. He acts; He does not react. He initiates love. He is love without motive.
— James Burtschaell
Dad? What are you going to give the people of Earth?" Jesus asked."I'm going to give them each a rainbow so that they will know how special they are," God said.
— Anthony T. Hincks
That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church.
— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
— Albert Einstein
The percentage of leading scientists who profess not to believe in a personal God tells us little unless we also know on what they base their profession. How much do they know about metaphysics, Christian theology, and intellectual history in relationship to their particular areas of scientific expertise? The intellectual relationship between religion and science is a two-way street. Just as one ought not to place much stock in geological views of a religious believer who has never studied geology, so one ought not to give much credence to the religious views of a scientist who has never studied intellectual history, the philosophy of religion, and theology. The highly specialized character of contemporary academic life makes it perfectly possible to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry or physics, for example, while knowing nothing about the theology of creation, metaphysical univocity, and why they matter for questions pertaining to the reality of God and the character of God's relationship to the natural world.
— Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society
The heavenly Father knows all my faults. But still forgives all my sins.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
One thoughtful Evangelical pastor said he approved of using the massacre for recruitment, as long as it was truly done for God. He bristled at "spiritual headhunters, just racking up another scalp. The Bible was never meant to be a club," he said. "If I'm using it as a weapon, that's really sad.
— Dave Cullen, Columbine
Challenge everything for the Truth. Only those who challenge everything for the Truth are the blessed ones.
— Osho
Religiöse Menschen haben Rechte, Religionen nicht.
— Ali Can, Hotline für besorgte Bürger
...[T]hose who care about their souls and do not subordinate them to the body dissociate themselves firmly from these others and refuse to accompany them on their haphazard journey; and, believing that it is wrong to oppose philosophy with her offer of liberation and purification, they turn and follow her wherever she leads...
— Socrates, Apology, Crito and Phaedo of Socrates.
Walking on the difficult and dangerous path which everything been destroyed is very hard if there is not the help from God.
— Kamaran Ihsan Salih
Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge.
— Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Religion allows people to feel justified in acting out their primal instincts, that is, to assault, destroy, rape, and murder others, who they judge as being different and inferior to themselves.
— Robert  Black
It’s easier to love the idol than to love Him. The path is narrow, and few find it because they are afraid. We have made God into an idol to fear because we made ourselves to be worthless. The object of God's love has been manipulated to be contemptible.
— RJ Blizzard
I painlessly came to realize that the reverence I felt for the holiness of life is not ever likely to be entirely at home in organized religion. It was later, when I was able to travel farther , that the presence of holiness and mystery seemed, as far as my vision was able to see, to descend into the windows of Chartres, the stone peasant figures of Autun, the tall sheets of gold on the walls of Torcello that reflected the light of the sea; in the frescoes of Piero, of Giotto; in the shell of a church wall in Ireland still standing on a floor of sheep-cropped grass with no ceiling other than he changing sky.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
Religion searches for reason, and never finds purpose. They think the purpose is to have better reasons. The people are blind, and their religion does not want them to see. Religion gives them reasons based on principles instead of eyes to see.
— RJ Blizzard
And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him. And I nibbled on my crust of bread. Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening.
— Ellie Wiesel
The highest religion of human is the identity for which he is living rest is either one of the path or unnecessary fight.
— Ankit Samrat
The only measure of judging a human being is through that person’s character, because character is not determined by race, religion, gender or social status. And one who recognizes this simple fact of human life behaves the same with the scientist, the janitor and the sex-worker.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
The theory of the relations between states and churches is bound up with the theory of Toleratio, and on that suject the eighteenth century scarcely rose above an intermittend, embarrassed, and unscientific view. For religious liberty is composed of the properties both of religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it. The problem is less complicated and the solution less radical and less profound.
— John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
— Maya Angelou
No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.
— L. Frank Baum, The Lost Princess of Oz
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge it is thinking that makes what we read ours. 
— John Locke
Great minds are always feared by lesser minds.
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin