Quotes about Religion

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

Bonhoeffer recognized that standard-issue "religion" had made God small, having dominion only over those things we could not explain. That "religious" God was merely the "God of the gaps," the God who concerned himself with our "secret sins" and hidden thoughts. But Bonhoeffer rejected this abbreviated God.

Sometimes the curses of the godless sound better than the hallelujahs of the pious."

When Wilberforce's mother and grandfather sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, they hadn't the slightest idea that they were sending the boy into a glowing hotbed of Methodism.

Religion was a dead, man-made thing, and at the heart of Christianity was something else entirely—God himself, alive.

Religion to other religions. Then he came to his main point: the essence of Christianity is not about religion at all, but about the person of Christ.

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith.

Wilberforce says that when he was first taken to a play, "it was almost by force." It seems severe and ridiculous to us that what he had imbibed of religion would make him think the theater sinful, but we have to appreciate the circumstances and shibboleths of that era.

A state which which includes within itself a terrorized Church has lost its most faithful servant.

I would rather believe God doesn't exist than believe he doesn't care.

Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.

If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us.