Great Throughts Treasury

"Religion is the divinity within us reaching up to the divinity above." - Bahai Saying NULL

"The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested center and ruler of man’s life., and that the church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of his being." - William Barrett, fully William Christopher Barrett

"One’s religion is whatever he is most interested in." -

"In the religion which we shall call dynamic, prayer is independent of its verbal expression; it is an elevation of the soul that can dispense with speech." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

"It is… by the superiority of its morality that a religion wins over souls and reveals them to a certain conception of things." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

"Through religion all men get a little of what a few privileged souls possess in full." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

"Religion is devoted and loyal commitment to the best that reason and insight can discover. The liberal understands what loyalty means as the authoritarian never can." - Julius Seelye Bixler

"Brotherhood is Religion!" - William Blake

"Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion." - William Blake

"Religions are not revealed; they are evolved. If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as perfect as the first moment of its revelation as after ten thousand years of practice." - Robert Blatchford, fully Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford

"A man’s religion is what he thinks about his relation to the universe, or rather, is what he feels about this relation; or better, it is what he does about this relation; or best it is how he acts." - R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth

"In religion fear and approval to some extent must always combine... In religion approval implies devotion, and devotion seems hardly possible, unless there is some fear, if only the fear of estrangement." - Francis Herbert Bradley

"You must also own religion in rags, as well as when in silver slippers; and stand by him, too, when bound in irons, as well as when he walketh the streets with applause." - John Bunyan

"Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other?" - Samuel Butler

"People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced." - Samuel Butler

"The submergence of self in the pursuit of an ideal, the readiness to spend oneself without measure, prodigally, almost ecstatically, for something intuitively apprehended as great and noble, spend oneself one know not why - some of us like to believe that this is what religion means." - Benjamin Cardozo, fully Benjamin Nathan Cardozo

"A man must put his mind into his religion if he will keep his heart in it." - Thomas A. Carney

"Religion is not removed by removing superstition." -

"Cruel persecution and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims." -

"A little “splitting” of the rays of religion and a little “releasing of the energy” of the Bible seems in order. If we would only spend sums like the two billion dollars spent on our atomic bombs to harness the forces of God’s teachings, what a blessing it would be for the human race." -

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple: the philosophy is kindness." -

"Compassion is the root of religion; pride the root of sin." - Tulsidas NULL

"In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful." - Paul Davies

"Religion has its origin in the depths of the soul and it can be understood only by those who are prepared to take the plunge." - Christopher Henry Dawson

"Religion is a private matter. Religious thought, to have any kind of integrity at all, must be the most private, tremblingly sacred kind of awareness we have. When religious terminology is bandied about, it loses its religious character and becomes entirely political and coercive." - E. L. Doctorow, fully Edgar Lawrence Doctorow

"Agnosticism denies to the human mind a power of attaining knowledge which it does possess... Agnosticism, as such, is a theory about knowledge and not about religion." - Richard Downey

"Religion is not mere conformity to moral law, it is an espousal of moral ideals, a dedication of the heart, a loyal devotion, the perpetual renewal of a right spirit within us." - Durant Drake

"Religion has its origin and its support in dissatisfaction with life, resulting from reflection on the failure of life to satisfy the primary desires of man." - K. Dunlap

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion." - L. Francis Edmunds

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man." - Albert Einstein

"The real religious problem of our society is to secure the general acceptance of a religion adapted to the requirements of continuous progress towards an ideal, consisting of all humanity." - Charles A. Ellwood

"An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy." - Stephen A. Erickson

"Little by little the barrier grows, and “religion” becomes a rule of life, not life itself." - Michael Fairless, pseudomymn for Margaret Fairless Barber

"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes." - James Feibleman

"Religion is the way we react to what we cannot evade." - Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré

"Apocalyptic religion has its merits, but tolerance is not one of them." - W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester

"Every war of the future will be a war of religion, for no country will go to war till it can give its cause the color of a Crusade and so secure for its maintenance absolute loyalty of a heroic quality in the whole population." - W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester

"Granted that ritual in any realm from courtesy to worship can become formal, empty, and stiff. Nevertheless, with all its dangers it is an absolute necessity. We cannot… train children in the spirit of religion if the appropriate activities of worship and devotion are forgotten." -

"Religion is something that only secondarily can be taught. It must primarily be absorbed." -

"The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth." -

"If men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be if without it?" - Benjamin Franklin

"Religion: What at one time was a dynamic structure, mediating between man and his destiny and interpersonal responsibilities, has become mere mechanical ritual that dwarfs men rather than strengthens them." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"I do not share the belief that there can or will be on earth one religion. I am striving, therefore, to find a common factor and to induce mutual tolerance" - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save their honor, their religion, their soul and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Religion is not what is grasped by the brain, but a heart grasp." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance. When man learns better, he will learn to befriend even these. Today he does not even know how to befriend a man of a different religion or from a different country." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Where there is fear, there is no religion." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"It seems to me that religion is part of life. To strike down laws because they are partially religiously motivated would be to strike down most laws." - Ronald Garet, fully Ronald Reed Garet

"Whatever else religion does, it relates a view of the ultimate nature of reality to a set of ideas of how man is well advised... to live." - Clifford Geertz