I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.
There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins.
There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.
The marriage of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored in all cultures and by every religious faith. It’s in this institution that children are meant to be nurtured. We know this after thousands of years of human experience.
Poverty is everyone’s problem. It cuts across any line you can name: age, race, social, geographic or religious. Whether you are black or white; rich, middle-class or poor, we are ALL touched by poverty.
I wasn’t really raised in a religious family.
So the question is, First, Whether the civil magistrate hath power to force men in things religious to do contrary to their conscience, and if they will not to punish them in their goods, liberties, or lives? this we hold in the negative.
I have never been religious. I talk to God every day, but He’s never said a word to me about religion! I think the most powerful prayer is surrender.
It becomes us in humility to make our devout acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the inestimable civil and religious blessings with which we are favored.
My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That’s not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It’s anything but that.
There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.
Any religious organization should be allowed to hire based on their religious preference- but not with federal dollars.
We don’t need this religious cosmopolitanism. It’s no good.
My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one’s religious convictions.
I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.
I am proud of being a Somali-American Muslim, and my wardrobe has been an important part of my religious and cultural upbringing.
We in the United States should be all the more thankful for the freedom and religious tolerance we enjoy. And we should always remember the lessons learned from the Holocaust, in hopes we stay vigilant against such inhumanity now and in the future.
Themes of redemption, temptation, and faith don’t necessarily apply directly to religion. A lot of people find faith in their lives outside of God and still deal with notions of temptation and redemption that aren’t religious.
The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.
I don’t know of any cases where as a result of religious precepts a population have found themselves enjoying less food than they would have if they didn’t follow this particular religion.
I became alienated from this religious upbringing, and started making music. I wanted to be a big star. All those things I saw in the films and on the media took hold of me, and perhaps I thought this was my god: the goal of making money.
I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and ‘manned up’ in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I’m not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way.
Mankind are divided into sects, and individuals think very differently on religious subjects, from the purest motives; and that gracious common Parent, who loves all his children alike, beholds with approbation every one who worships him in sincerity.
Also, I am very religious. It gave me peace of mind all my career.
When I was young, I was religious.
Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day.
The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle – secular, humanist, or religious – says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not?
When I visited Guantanamo Bay several years ago, I met a team of psychiatrists treating the detainees. When I asked how they distinguished between, say, schizophrenia or bipolarity and a bedrock religious commitment to holy war, they couldn’t answer.
Religious tolerance is something we should all practice; however, there have been more persecution and atrocities committed in the name of religion and religious freedom than anything else.
There is a species of person called a ‘Modern Churchman’ who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.
I think there’s nothing about evolution in the Bible; I think this is a statement of religious insecurity. But people have their beliefs.
While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.
There is no stopping the world’s tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.
Not all Modern Orthodox Jews, at the present juncture, identify with what the Israeli government does. In Israel many religious Zionists strongly oppose the government because of the disengagement.
A childish soul not inoculated with compulsory prayer is a soul open to any religious infection.
The most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim, but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian.
Installing an activist liberal majority on the Supreme Court will put religious liberties at risk for generations to come.
A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
The world’s a mean place. It’s unfair, then it’s fair. It’s hateful, then it’s loving. It’s a very peculiar place on philosophical and metaphysical and religious levels.
I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not – there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, ‘soul.’
I’m a spiritual person. I’m not very religious. I was raised Catholic, but I am influenced a lot by Buddhism and Hinduism.
Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists.
Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
But I do think that we approach music, in of itself, with a religious attitude.
During my first visit, I was really struck by how deeply religious many Oklahomans are. It is a very conservative state and as somebody who grew up in a very liberal country, it was jarring to me at first.
Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules, it ceases to be a religion, as it kills responsibility which is an essence of the true religious act.
As for the Pope, I am too old to be frightened by his shadow, and am quite sure his shadow or Substance will do less harm to the liberties of my country than will a party, who seek to acquire political power by exciting religious bigotry in the minds of their duped followers.
Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.
I grew up in Nacogdoches, Texas… raised by my grandmother. We were very poor and had no indoor plumbing. My grandmother was a very religious woman, though, and she gave me a lot of faith and inner strength.
