Quotes on Religion and Philosophy

Louis Aragon:

Of all possible sexual perversions, religion is the only one to have ever been scientifically systematized.

Treatise on Style, pt. 1, "The Pen" (1928). Quoted from: The Columbia Dictionary Of Quotations.

Catherine E. Beecher:

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

Quoted in Catherine Beecher, by Kathryn Kish Sklar (1973)

Ambrose Bierce:

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

The Devil’s Dictionary, (1881-1906)

Feodor Dostoyevsky:

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

Ivan Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov, bk. 5, ch. 5 (1880)

Friedrich Dürrenmatt:

Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand.

An Angel Comes to Babylon, act III (1954).

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.

The Conduct of Life, (1860).

Eugène Ionesco:

There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.

Present Past, Past Present, (1968)

Ludwig Feuerbach:

Religion has its genesis in the essential difference between man and the animal - the animals have no religion.

The Essence of Christianity

Ludwig Feuerbach:

If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism - at least in the sense of this work - is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

The Essence of Christianity, preface (1841)

Sigmund Freud:

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.

The Future of an Illusion, (1927)

Emma Goldman:

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

Anarchism and Other Essays, (1917)

Alexander Herzen:

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organisation. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will.

From the Other Shorem, "Omnia Mea Mecum Porto" (1855). Quoted from: The Columbia Dictionary Of Quotations

Aldous Huxley:

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. ... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

Texts and Pretexts, "Amor Fati" (1932).

William James:

Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defense of religious faith hinges upon action.

The Will To Believe (1897)

Immanuel Kant:

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

Jon Krakauer:

Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God.

Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

Suzanne Lafollette:

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.

Concerning Women, "The Beginnings of Emancipation" (1926)

Christopher Marlowe:

I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Machiavel, in The Jew of Malta, "Prologue," (1589)

Karl Marx:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, (1844)

George Monbiot:

The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, "come out," and to those in darkness, "be free".'"

So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. ...Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.

"America is a religion," Mail & Guardian, July 29, 2003.

Montaigne:

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from the essence of nature. Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.

Of Custom

Elaine Pagels:

What I'm working on now and what I find I'm passionately thinking about, has to do with the interaction of politics and religion. Certainly it's most relevant in America, as this country was founded, in its beginning at least, with the Puritans and others, who were people who were religiously motivated and saw their migration to this country as a religious act - as the people of Israel coming to the Promised Land - and of course to a land which they claimed was theirs by divine right. They were also defying the King of England and his claims to divine right, which had been worked out in a very complicated way.

Interview with Edge, July 2003

Elaine Pagels:

Rather than doing the hard work of looking at religion scientifically in terms of our human biological nature, some scientists are merely anti-religious polemicists. Their writings might lead you to believe that religion is a relic of some ancient superstition—that it's for people who are inadequately scientific.

...In fact I think it's very important to look at religion perhaps as a function of the human brain, as a manifestation of part of the way we think, and certainly as a very important part of human culture. These are subjects worthy of a great deal of study by neurologists, anthropologists, cultural historians - worth a great deal more than ridicule.

Interview with Edge, July 2003

Elaine Pagels:

[A]ppeals to religion, like those that are currently being made by the religious right, can work in a democracy to subvert all of the values to which they give lip service. It worked brilliantly with the Roman Empire. Beliefs are overrated in Christianity. Religious traditions have to do with a lot more than beliefs.

Interview with Edge, July 2003

Elaine Pagels:

[P]atriotism is about patria - fatherland, father, country, place, our family, our people - all of those emotions, which are very deep and which are the source which politicians count on for political passion and political conviction - let alone conviction about war - which are deeply connected with religious impulses, and so people have always drawn on that.

Interview with Edge, July 2003

Thomas Paine:

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

The Age of Reason, pt. 1, "The Author's Profession of Faith" (1794).

Blaise Pascal:

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Pensées, no. 813, (1670)

Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan:

It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity.

Quoted in: J. A. C. Brown, Techniques of Persuasion, ch. 11 (1965)

Salman Rushdie:

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.

"Is Nothing Sacred?," Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture, February 6, 1990.

Bertrand Russell:

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

Bertrand Russell Can Religion Cure our Troubles, 1954.

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Marquis de Sade:

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Philosophy in the Bedroom, (1795)

Friedrich von Schlegel:

Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in the strict sense which is not a product of freedom. Thus one can say: The freer, the more religious; and the more education, the less religion.

Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum, aphorism 233. (1798)

Friedrich Von Schlegel:

Religion and morals are symmetrically opposed, just like poetry and philosophy.

Selected Ideas, idea 67, (1799-1800)

Friedrich Von Schlegel:

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

Selected Ideas, idea 151, (1799-1800)

Paul Tillich:

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life.

Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, (1963)

Alexis de Tocqueville:

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

Democracy in America, vol. 2, pt. 1, ch. 5 (1840)

Alfred North Whitehead:

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.... The great point to be kept in mind is that normally an advance in science will show that statements of various religious beliefs require some sort of modification. It may be that they have to be expanded or explained, or indeed entirely restated.

If the religion is a sound expression of truth, this modification will only exhibit more adequately the exact point which is of importance. This process is a gain. In so far, therefore, as any religion has any contact with physical facts, it is to be expected that the point of view of those facts must be continually modified as scientific knowledge advances. In this way, the exact relevance of these facts for religious thought will grow more and more clear. The progress of science must result in the unceasing codification of religious thought, to the great advantage of religion.

Science and the Modern World, Macmillan (1925)

Oscar Wilde:

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

Chameleon, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (1894)