c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look after her. Believe me, there is nothing so insufferable as a saint, I wouldn't sic one on my worst enemy.
— Isabel Allende, Mi país inventado: Un paseo nostálgico por Chile
Do you think there is heaven or hell? he signed.‘I don’t know. Not in the Christian way, if that’s what you mean. I think people have a right to believe in whatever they want. I just don’t.’…If someone came in here and gave you positive proof, would you do anything different?She shook her head. ‘I think it’s just as likely that someone could say that this place, right here, is heaven, hell and earth all at the same time. And we still wouldn’t know what to do differently. Everyone just muddles through, trying not to make too many mistakes.
— David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
He has done things that caused me to doubt His wisdom, but never His existence.
— Paulo Coelho
Are there any religions on your list that include the slaughter of noblemen as a holy duty?
— Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.
— Banksy
Go back,go back to sleep.Yes, you are allowed.You who have no Love in your heart,you can go back to sleep.The power of Loveis exclusive to us,you can go back to sleep.I have been burntby the fire of Love.You who have no such yearning in your heart,go back to sleep.The path of Love,has seventy-two folds and countless facets.Your love and religionis all about deceit, control and hypocrisy,go back to sleep.I have torn to pieces my robe of speech,and have let go of the desire to converse.You who are not naked yet,you can go back to sleep.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi
If no one had ever challenged religious authority, there’d be no democracy, no public schools, women’s rights, improvements to science and medicine, evolution of slavery and no laws against child abuse or spousal abuse. I was afraid to challenge my religious beliefs because that was the basis of creation—mine anyway. I was afraid to question the Bible or anything in it, and when I did, that’s when I became involved with PFLAG and realized that my son was a perfectly normal human being and there was nothing for God to heal because Bobby was perfect just the way he was.
— Mary Griffith
I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Du kennst doch bestimmt den Spruch, dass Gott die Menschen nach seinem Ebenbild erschaffen hat. Guck dich mal um! Wenn man davon ausgeht, dass Gott ein Arschloch ist, ergibt das plötzlich mächtig viel Sinn.
— Marc-Uwe Kling, Die Känguru-Chroniken: Ansichten eines vorlauten Beuteltiers
There is no limit to the amount of intelligence invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.
— Saul Bellow
Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.
— Christopher Hitchens
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.
— Kahlil Gibran
We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.
— Sam Harris
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
— Oscar Wilde
Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.
— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.
— Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
It is in your hands to make life miserable or happy. No religion, spiritual leaders or knowledge will ever make you fully satisfied.
— Santosh Kalwar
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.
— The Bhagavad Gita
We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.
— Michael Polanyi, Meaning
Somewhere along the line, organized religion stopped being about faith, and started being about who had the power to keep the faith. You said that the purpose of religion was to bring people together. But does it, really? Or does it-knowingly, purposefully, and intentionally--break them apart?
— Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion...One may eat a cake with icing either straight or sidewise. It will taste sweet either way.
— Ramakrishna, Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
I do not consider myself a religious person, because I don't adhere to a particular religion or faith or prescribed beliefs, as did my father, who was a Baptist minister. And I am not an atheist, one who thinks that belief in anything beyond the here and now and the rational is delusion. I love science, but I allow for mystery, things that can never be proven by a rational mind. I am a person who thinks about the nature of the spirit when I write. I think about what can't be known and only imagined. I often sense a spirit or force or meaning beyond myself. I leave it open as to what the spirit is, but I continue to make guesses -- that it could be the universal binding of the emotion of love, or a joyful quality of humanity, or a collective unconscious that turns out to be a unified conscience. The spirit could be all those worshiped by all the religions, even those that deny the validity of others. It could be that we all exist in all ten dimensions of a string-theory universe and are seeding memories in all of them and occupy them simultaneously as memory. Or we exist only as thought and out perception that it is a physical world is a delusion. The nature of spirit could also be my mother and my grandmother and that they really do serve as my muses as I fondly imagine them doing at times. Or maybe the nature of the spirit is a freer imagination. I've often thought that imagination was the conduit to compassion, and compassion is a true spiritual nature. Whatever the spirit might be, I am not basing what I do in this life on any expected reward or punishment in the hereafter or thereafter. It is enough that I feel blessed -- and by whom or what I don't know -- but I receive it with gratitude that I am a writer and my work is to imagine all the possibilities.
— Amy Tan
Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world.
— D.T. Suzuki, The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk
The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual.
— B.R. Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual
Atheism, true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.
— Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age
When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
A woman must be a woman and cannot be a man. She, too, is God's creature and her divine station is that she should bear and care for and rear children. So I am a man created for another office and work. But should I be proud because of this and say: I am not a woman, therefore I am better in the sight of God? Should I not rather praise God for creating both the woman and me also through the woman and putting me in this station? What a un-Christian thing it is that one should despire another because he is in another station or is doing something other then he is doing?... "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled." for God will not and can not tolerate such pride and arrogance.
— Martin Luther
When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always I reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.
— David Hume
The good news is that Christ frees us from the need to obnoxiously focus on our goodness, our commitment, and our correctness. Religious has made us obsessive almost beyond endurance. Jesus invited us to a dance...and we've turned in into a march of soldiers, always checking to see if we're doing it right and are in step and in line with the other soldiers. We know a dance would be more fun, but we believe we must go through hell to get to heaven, so we keep marching.
— Steve   Brown, A Scandalous Freedom
No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own . . . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
For love is a celestial harmonyOf likely hearts compos'd of stars' concent,Which join together in sweet sympathy,To work each other's joy and true content,Which they have harbour'd since their first descentOut of their heavenly bowers, where they did seeAnd know each other here belov'd to be.
— Edmund Spenser, Fowre Hymnes
Everything in this life passes away — only God remains, only He is worth struggling towards. We have a choice: to follow the way of this world, of the society that surrounds us, and thereby find ourselves outside of God; or to choose the way of life, to choose God Who calls us and for Whom our heart is searching.
— Seraphim Rose
Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,Born under one law, to another bound;Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,Created sick, commanded to be sound.
— Fulke Greville
Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.	‘What a cold-blooded jest!’ said he to himself. ‘It was not devised by a God.’	From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the churches became works of art
— Honoré de Balzac
Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them.
— Rabindranath Tagore
One reader of an early draft of this chapter complained at this point, saying that by treating the hypothesis of God as just one more scientific hypothesis, to be evaluated by the standards of science in particular and rational thought in general, Dawkins and I are ignoring the very widespread claim by believers in God that their faith is quite beyond reason, not a matter to which such mundane methods of testing applies. It is not just unsympathetic, he claimed, but strictly unwarranted for me simply to assume that the scientific method continues to apply with full force in this domain of truth.Very well, let's consider the objection. I doubt that the defender of religion will find it attractive, once we explore it carefully.The philosopher Ronaldo de Souza once memorably described philosophical theology as "intellectual tennis without a net," and I readily allow that I have indeed been assuming without comment or question up to now that the net of rational judgement was up. But we can lower it if you really want to.It's your serve.Whatever you serve, suppose I return service rudely as follows: "What you say implies that God is a ham sandwich wrapped in tin foil. That's not much of a God to worship!". If you then volley back, demanding to know how I can logically justify my claim that your serve has such a preposterous implication, I will reply: "oh, do you want the net up for my returns, but not for your serves?Either way the net stays up, or it stays down. If the net is down there are no rules and anybody can say anything, a mug's game if there ever was one. I have been giving you the benefit of the assumption that you would not waste your own time or mine by playing with the net down.
— Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
For it is the bitter grief of theology and its blessed task, too, always to have to seek (because it does not clearly have present to it at the time)...always providing that one has the courage to ask questions, to be dissatisfied, to think with the mind and heart one ACTUALLY has, and not with the mind and heart one is SUPPOSED TO have.
— Karl Rahner
I have always been resistant to doctrine, and any spirituality I had experienced thus far in my life had been much more abstract and not aligned with any recognized religion. For me, the most trustworthy vehicle for spirituality had always proven to be music. It cannot be manipulated, or politicized, and when it is, that becomes immediately obvious.
— Eric Clapton
The Hindus criticise the Mahomedans for having spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the Inquisition. But really speaking, who is better and more worthy of our respect—the Mahomedans and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their salvation, or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavour to keep others in darkness, who would not consent to share his intellectual and social inheritance with those who are ready and willing to make it a part of their own make-up? I have no hesitation in saying that if the Mahomedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean; and meanness is worse than cruelty.
— B.R. Ambedkar, The Annihilation of Caste
We are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe.
— Chris Hedges
That’s the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our community
— Chuck Palahniuk
Religion can only do two things for mankind turn them into monster or stupid. 
— M.F. Moonzajer
No religion is higher than humanity.
— Abdul Sattar Edhi
Empty words and long praises do not impress God. Show Him your faith by your deeds
— Abdul Sattar Edhi
What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?
— Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil—you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.
— Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.
— Sam Harris
Tie me up, please..." Chantal said. They looked above at some vines and roots hanging down from the grassy area above the depression in the canal they were standing in. She was in his hands—he had to comply.A little bit of kink was one of the most delicious of erotic pleasures. Catholic school girls were often the horniest—Brett could hardly contain his elation.
— Jess C. Scott, Catholic School Girls Rule
Once you've condoned faith in general, you've condoned any crazy shit done because of faith.
— Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales
God has judged me all my life. But that is God's privilege, my lady. Not yours.
— Barbara Hambly, The Armies of Daylight
The natural is so awesome that we need not go beyond it.
— Ruth Hurmence Green, The Born Again Skeptic's Guide To The Bible
Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.
— Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.
— Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. 
— Sam Harris
The gods of the realms are many and varied -- or they are the many and varied names and identities tagged onto the same being. I know not -- and care not -- which.
— R.A. Salvatore, Sojourn
We want our children to become who they are--- and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn possibility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying.
— Gregory J. Millman, Homeschooling: A Family's Journey
Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.
— Scott Westerfeld, Pretties
Religion isn't the opium of the people, it's the hypocrisy.
— Válgame, Zori 2ª Parte
A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.
— Vance Havner
A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes.
— Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method
The purpose of the gospel is to make bad men good and good men better, and to change human nature.
— David O. McKay
I’m sure I am wrong about many things, although I’m not sure exactly which things I’m wrong about. I’m even sure I’m wrong about what I think I’m right about in at least some cases.
— Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy
Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Those who feel guilty contemplating "betraying" the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so loyal—the "eternal" tradition introduced to them in their youth—is in fact the evolved product of many adjustments firmly but delicately made by earlier lovers of the same tradition.
— Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.
— C.J. Sansom, Revelation
If my God damns people for love but saves them for brutle warfare, then that is not the God I know or wish to worship.
— Cristina Marrero
The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence humans have ever committed. 
— Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not many years before the Happening, one of your country's largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly the first one. Of course they liked the book better! It was full of magic and contradictions that they could quote to reinforce their bigoted and hateful opinions, as I well know, for I chose many parts of it from among the scrolls and epistles that were lying around in caves here and there. They're correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it.(The small god in Ch. 44)
— Sheri S. Tepper, The Visitor
I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.
— Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
For this reason I tell you: When you pray and ask for something, believe that you have received it, and you will be given whatever you ask for.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version
Be courageous and He shall strengthen your heart, all of you who hope in the Lord.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
When confronted by a ‘believer’ it is easy for me to contrast the views of the skeptic with those of the rationalist. I simply reach into my pocket and pull out my change.Holding a quarter aloft, I say, ‘This is a most remarkable coin, for it is heavier than all the sins of humanity committed since the beginning of the human race.’I then hold up a nickel and say, ‘This coin is even more amazing, as it is brighter and shinier than the flames that proceeded from the Burning Bush discovered on Mt. Sinai by Moses.’Then I raise a penny and state, ‘This portrait of President Lincoln is more realistic and true-to-life than any portrait of Satan ever painted.’And finally, I hold out a bright, shiny dime and say, ‘And this dime is the most amazing of all because it is heavier and contains more precious metals than all the gold bricks in the streets of Heaven.’I end with ‘Give to Caesar what is his, and hold the rest of it dear—for it is all you see and touch—and the Christian god can take care of all his things, for they amount to less than this 41 cents I hold here in my hand.
— E. Haldeman-Julius
Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice.
— Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion
Could it be, as one writer puts it, that every knock at the door of a brothel is actually a knock at the heart of God? 
— Randy Elrod, Sex, Lies & Religion
We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.
— Carl Sagan, Contact
I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit.
— Christopher Hitchens
The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.
— G.K. Chesterton
The problem I have with all this religion stuff is that I can't relate to it. I think most people got into 'cos it gave them something to do on a Sunday, but since all the shops are now open it isn't required as much.
— Karl Pilkington, An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington
May you live in such a way that your death is just the beginning of your life.
— Max Lucado, Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make A Difference
Conflict is inevitable but combat is optional.
— Max Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name
I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.
— Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.
— Tana French, In the Woods
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
— Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
I don't see,' I said, 'how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Theology is the effort to explain the﻿ unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
— H.L. Mencken
Rule Number Two, Monsignor. Do not show pity.
— Gretchen McNeil, Possess
If God is the Creator, if God englobes every single thing in the universe, then God is everything, and everything is God. God is the earth and the sky, and the tree planted in the earth under the sky, and the bird in the tree, and the worm in the beak of the bird, and the dirt in the stomach of the worm. God is He and She, straight and gay, black and white and red - yes even that...and green and blue and all the rest. And so, to despise me for loving women or you for being a Red who made love with a woman, would be to despise not only His own creations but also to hate Himself. My God is not so stupid as that.
— Hillary Jordan, When She Woke
I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor. 
— Thomas Jefferson
A disciple came to the celebrated Master of the Good Name with a question. “Rabbi, how are we to distinguish between a true master and a fake?” And the master of the good name said, “When you meet a person who poses as a master, ask him a question: whether he knows how to purify your thoughts. If he says that he knows, then he is a fake.
— Elie Wiesel
We acquire both the language and religious concepts from our immediate culture – at the same time. A child cannot discriminate between useful survival information and the emotional and psychological manipulations of religion. Once infected, these ideas are deeply embedded and almost impossible to change.
— Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality
A fundamentalist is someone who wants to substitute what he believes for what you believe," Max said. "And someone who thinks he knows the will of God better than anyone else.
— Robin Wasserman, The Book of Blood and Shadow
Misstraue jedem Politiker, jedem Regierungs- oder Staatschef, der seine Religion zum Instrument macht. Halte Abstand von solchen Politikern, die ihre auf das Jenseits orientierte Religion und ihre diesseitige Politik miteinander vermischen.
— Helmut Schmidt, Sechs Reden
When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.
— Harry A. Blackmun
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
إن المؤمن ليدرك بحسن الخلق درجة الصائم والقائم
— Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find our actual place in the fabric of nature. We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go. That we even do science is a hopeful glimmer of mental health. However, it's not enough merely to accept these insights intellectually while we cling to a spiritual ideology that is not only rootless in nature but also, in many ways, contemptuous of what is natural.
— Ann Druyan
When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
...Bin Laden's quotes from the Quaran resonated in my brain: "When you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck." "If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place." "Wherever you find the polytheists, kill them, seize them, besiege them, ambush them." "You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel
If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.
— John Patrick Shanley, Doubt
...atheism is not a conscious act of turning away from all gods. It is simply the final destination for those who think. ...you will be pleased to discover that the sky does not fall down on your head. ... if you still want to pray, you can (the success rate of your prayers is unlikely to change).
— Guy P. Harrison
I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.
— John Henry Newman
The only thing that is still free in this world is religion, which is why a lot of people "find it.
— Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Please do not ever think I am without you or you are without me, I live with you all the time.
— Santosh Kalwar
It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until 'Juneteenth'. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state—a state that had its own courageous revolution—from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today that they will join their fore-runners in the flat-earth community, and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks—as a joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair, and take care to ensure that their tale is told.
— Christopher Hitchens
The healing is my working out my salvation. The need constant because my desire for seperateness constantly wrestles with my need for oneness with Jesus. The search for Jesus is bigger, deeper and agonizing.
— W. Scott Lineberry
Well, what I don't understand is why people get all dressed up and drive to church so they can sit there and get scolded. Seems to me it'd be a whole lot easier for the to just stay home in their pj's, eat pancakes, and get yelled at over the radion.
— Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
When we three spoke ourselves into human existences the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitation that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird (a jay), whose nature it is to fly, choosing to only walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly.
— William Paul Young
The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion
— Anthony Trollope
If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and from the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Religion turned some folks belligerent.
— Eileen Wilks, On the Prowl
Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.
— Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation.
— Daniel Radcliffe
The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
As a child abuse and neglect therapist I do battle daily with Christians enamored of the Old Testament phrase "Spare the rod and spoil the child." No matter how far I stretch my imagination, it does not stretch far enough to include the image of a cool dude like Jesus taking a rod to a kid.
— Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography
If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!
— Clark Adams
Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.
— Oscar Wilde, The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde
I felt an overwhelming gratitude in my life right now and wanted a chance to acknowledge it. I felt that any thanks given to any god all went to the same place, anyway, no matter what religion you were centered in.
— Cate Tiernan, Full Circle
The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too.
— Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity
I had retained little of what is generally called religion, except for a visceral conviction that our lives are controlled by some universal mechanism that is greater than ourselves. Perhaps that was what others called God. Perhaps not.
— Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night
Don't they get afraid, then?""They have a religion for that.
— Ray Bradbury, The October Country
As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.
— David Hume, The Natural History of Religion
There is only one language, the language of the Heart. There is only one religion, the religion of Love.
— Sri Sathya Sai Baba
I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia
All religions have something to say about sex, and it rarely coincides with scientific knowledge of sex and sexuality.
— Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality
I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow.
— Keith Ablow, Denial
The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor is a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth. If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion at the expense of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: "Help and not Fight," "Assimilation and not Destruction," "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension".
— Swami Vivekananda
If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!
— Mahatma Gandhi
Some religions actually go so far as to label anyone who belongs to a religious sect other than their own a heretic, even though the overall doctrines and impressions of godliness are nearly the same. For example: The Catholics believe the Protestants are doomed to Hell simply because they do not belong to the Catholic Church. In the same way, many splinter groups of the Christian faith, such as the evangelical or revivalist churches, believe the Catholics worship graven images. (Christ is depicted in the image that is most physiologically akin to the individual worshipping him, and yet the Christians criticize "heathens" for the worship of graven images.) And the Jews have always been given the Devil's name.
— Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
But it's well known that repression makes a religion flourish.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.
— Carl Sagan, Contact
Have faith in God and in yourself; that will cure all. Hope for the best, expect the best, toil for the best and everything will come right for you in the end.
— Ramana Maharshi
I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
— Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
I dreamt of worldly success once.
— Miyamoto Musashi
My dear sister, you can’t escape God, and you can’t escape your skeletons in the closet. They will always be there until you take them out from behind those dusty old moth-eaten coats. Your exterior facade of ‘everything is alright’ only works for a little while, and then the cracks begin to show. You can only hide behind yourself for so long. You can’t keep running!
— Corallie Buchanan, Watch Out! Godly Women on the Loose
Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31
— Thomas Merton, Gandhi On Non-Violence
It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.
— Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing' people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.
— Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.
— Sam Harris
I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand.
— Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
The religious school she went to, growing up, Ms. Wright said how all the girls had to wear a scarf tied to cover their ears at all times. Based on the biblical idea that the Virgin Mary became pregnant when the Holy Spirit whispered in her ear. The idea that ears were vaginas. That, hearing just one wrong idea, you lost your innocence. One detail too many and you’d be ruined. Overdosed on information.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff
But you must still know to respect other people's faith.''Why? We don't respect any other delusion. We lock up people who believe they're Christ, yet we're supposed to humour those who believe in him.''By definition, faith is irrational: a belief you hold against the normal rules of evidence.''In which case I believe in Jedi
— Michael Arditti, The Enemy of the Good
All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.
— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
We give up our backs and allow religious myths to apply the rear naked choke to our minds.
— Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet
Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you're still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as 'race,' 'class,' 'nation,' and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.
— Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!
...The Qur'an cannot be translated. ...The book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Qur'an, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Qur'an-and peradventure something of the charm in English. It can never take the place of the Qur'an in Arabic, nor is it meant to do so...
— Marmaduke William Pickthall, The Meanings Of The Glorious Qur'an
People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.
— Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo