Religion In Society Quotes:

Freedom requires religion in society, not in individuals.

- Mitt Romney

topic: Individual, Religion In Society

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

- Steven Weinberg

source: "Behaving Badly? Stop Using Religion as an Excuse!" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 2, 2014.

topic: God, Atheist, People, Anti Religious, Theism

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

- Susan B. Anthony

topic: Inspirational, God, Death, Anti Religious, Religion And Politics

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

- Seneca the Younger

topic: Wise, Religious, Atheist, Anti Religious, Theism

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

- Jonathan Swift

source: 'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1706)

topic: Love, Hate, Religion, Love And Hate, Satirist

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

topic: Faith, Atheist, True Friend, Religious Faith, Morality And Religion

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

- Galileo Galilei

source: "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina". Essay by Galileo Galilei, 1615.

topic: Believe, Humor, Religion, Obliged, Anti Religious

Religion is the opium of the masses.

- Karl Marx

topic: Atheist, Fear, Religion, Opium, Organized Religion

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

- Isaac Asimov

topic: Religious, Atheist, Ignorance, Atheistic, Premature

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

- Richard Dawkins

source: "The Two Types of Faith" by Greg Cootsona, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 17, 2016.

topic: Death, Atheist, Learning, Atheistic, Religion In Society

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

- Douglas Adams

source: Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

topic: Atheist, Faith Religion, Atheism, Galaxy, Religious Faith

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

- George Bernard Shaw

topic: Life, Atheist, Beer, Credulity, Just Believe

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.

- Richard P. Feynman

topic: Religion, Mystery, Science Religion, Inventing Things, Mystery Of God

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.

- Ruth Hurmence Green

topic: Atheist, Fear, Dark, Dark Ages, Religion In Society

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

- Richard Dawkins

topic: God, Christian, Atheist, Subtle Atheist, Daily Atheist

Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.

- Mark Twain

topic: Believe, Men, Thinking, Atheistic, Religion In Society

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

- George Bernard Shaw

source: George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3238, e-artnow

topic: Atheist, If There Is A God, Religion, Gullibility, Credulity

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

- Thomas Jefferson

source: Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 1985.

topic: Religious, Wall, Rights, Clergy, Christian Freedom

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

- Steven Weinberg

topic: Atheism, Looks, Invisible, Anti Religious, Subtle Atheist

I do not believe in god because I do not believe in Mother Goose.

- Clarence Darrow

source: Speech, Toronto, Canada, 1930

topic: Mother, Atheist, Believe, Morality And Religion, Mother Goose

Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Religious, Atheist, Religion, Anti Religious, Theism

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.... The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

- John Adams

topic: Christian, Country, Religious, State Government, Deism

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

- Douglas Adams

source: Punch 23 May 1917 "Fairies"

topic: Beauty, Beautiful, Atheist, Subtle Atheist, Daily Atheist

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""

- Mark Twain

topic: Faith, Believe, Said, Science Religion, Atheistic

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

topic: Atheist, People, Religion, Morality And Religion, Religion And Politics

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

- Epicurus

topic: Spiritual, Religious, Atheist, Anti Religious, Theism

There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.

- Victor Hugo

topic: Teacher, Religion, Torches, Religion In Society

Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.

- Clarence Darrow

topic: People, Laughing, Religion, Laughing Gas, Tree Of Knowledge

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

- John Adams

topic: Religious, Insightful, Liberty, Anti Religious, Founding

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Morning, Eye, Atheism, Anti Religious, Religious Faith

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

- John Adams

source: John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.235

topic: Christian, Religious, Faith Religion, Christian Atheist, Christian Father

Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.

- Arthur C. Clarke

source: Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 18, 2004.

topic: Mind, Religion, Atheism, Religion In Society

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

- Douglas Adams

topic: Inspirational, Life, Atheist, Science Religion, Subtle Atheist

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Religion, Christianity, Orthodox, Orthodox Christianity, Deism

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Spiritual, Atheist, Science, Lighthouse, Atheistic

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

- Chapman Cohen

source: "An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism" by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Books, (p. 258), 1980.

topic: Spiritual, Religious, Atheist, Funny Sarcastic, Fragile Things

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.

- Clarence Darrow

topic: Mother, Believe, Atheism, Mother Goose, Geese

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

- Sigmund Freud

topic: Strength, Death, Spiritual, Religion In Society

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

- Isaac Asimov

topic: Spiritual, Atheist, Fear, Totality, Daily Atheist

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

- John Adams

topic: Bible, God, Religious, Moral Decay, Liberty And Justice

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

- James Kern Feibleman

source: Understanding Philosophy ch. 3 (1973)

topic: Believe, Religion, Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion In Society

Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.

- Robert Green Ingersoll

topic: Prayer, Fall, Law, Religion In Society

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

- Richard Dawkins

source: Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Atheist, Hate, Jealous, Anti Religious, Organized Religion

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

source: "Points of friction". Book by Agnes Repplier, "Consolations of the Conservative", 1920.

topic: Wisdom, Fear, Religion, Christian Discipleship, Christian Education

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

- Isaac Asimov

topic: Death, Atheist, Religion, Anti Religious, Morality And Religion

Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

- Robert A. Heinlein

topic: Dream, Children, Men, Spoiled Children, Daily Atheist