This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"“Knowledge, without common sense," says Lee, "is folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, is it death." But with common sense, it is wisdom; with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue and life and peace." - Austin Madsen Farrer
"Religion is more like a response to a friend than it is like obedience to an expert." - Austin Madsen Farrer
"Nothing in human life, least of all in religion, is ever right until it is beautiful." - Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Religion is action not diction." - Harry Emerson Fosdick
"There need not be in religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, anything that is against reason; but never while the sun shines will we get great religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, without going beyond reason." - Harry Emerson Fosdick
"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?" - Benjamin Franklin
"A religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it. Fundamentally, indeed, every religion is in this same way a religion of love for all those whom it embraces; while cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves... The cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion - a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime." - Richard Fuller
"By means of rational thought we have reached the opinion that God knows in advance only the possibilities open to a man in his freedom, not the particular decisions he will make.. It is the opinion of our religion that God never changes... and yet we find in the words of the prophets that God does repent over some things... It is impossible to solve this contradiction if we adopt the view that God knows particular things as particulars." - Gersonides, abbreviation of first letters as RalBaG from Levi ben Gerson NULL
"The true greatness and the true happiness of a country consist in wisdom; in that enlarged an comprehensive wisdom which includes education, knowledge, religion, virtue, freedom, with every influence which advances and every institution which supports them." - Henry Giles
"Nothing can be hostile to religion which is agreeable to justice." - William Ewart Gladstone
"The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace. " - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility and poverty, and despite mockery and disgrace, wretchedness, suffering, and death as things divine." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Some people speak as if hypocrites were confined to religion; but they are everywhere; people pretending to wealth when they have not a sixpence, assuming knowledge of which they are ignorant; shamming a culture they are far removed from adopting opinions they don't hold." - Albert Goldrich
"Today we have to open ourselves to the truth in all religions. Each religion must learn to discern its essential truth and to reject its cultural and historical limitations." - Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion
"Nothing shocks me more in the men of religion and their flocks than their... pretensions to be the only religious people." - Jean Guéhenno, given name Marcel-Jules-Marie Guéhenno
"Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion is socially powerful only so far as it has custom on its side." - Philip G. Hamerton, fully Philip Gilbert Hamerton
"The main objective of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him." - Thomas Hardy
"Man, without religion, is the creature of circumstances." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
"Never let your love for your profession overshadow your religious feeling. Depend on it that religion will strengthen, not weaken, your energies, and will not only make you a better sailor, but a superior man. Professional studies are not to be neglected; but, on the other hand, take care how you fall into the common error of believing they are the remedy for all the ills of life." - Benjamin R. Haydon
"Religion is the answer to that cry of Reason which nothing can silence, that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet, that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply." - Isaac Thomas Hecker
"The person who thinks there can be any real conflict between science and religion must be either very young in science or very ignorant in religion." - Philip Henry
"Judaism is a religion of time aiming at sanctification of time... The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven." - Roswell Dwight Hitchcock
"As knowledge advances, science ceases to scoff at religion; and religion ceases to frown on science. The hour of mockery by the one, and of reproof by the other, is passing away. Henceforth, they will dwell together in unity and good-will. They will mutually illustrate the wisdom, power, and grace of God. Science will adorn and enrich religion; and religion will ennoble and sanctify science." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"The enduring value of religion is in its challenge to aspiration and hope in the mind of man." - Ernest Martin Hopkins
"The external part of religion is doubtless of little value in comparison with the internal, and so is the cask in comparison with the wine contained in it: but if the cask be staved in, the wine must perish." - George Horne
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start a new religion. [Scientology]" - L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ronald Hubbard
"Religion may begin with our love of God, but true science ends there. In the very process of demystifying the world, we discover a new mystery, recognizing and celebrating God in everything." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"We are not only made in God’s image, but that we are made to image God - to reflect His freedom, joy, compassion and peace in our lives... When religion becomes reduced to an outward observation of rules and ceremonies and an intolerance toward the beliefs of others, we are mistaking the oyster for the pearl. The oyster is certainly valuable, but it is of infinitely greater value when it promotes the growth of the pearl... We cannot reason our way back to the roots of religion. We cannot trap God in stale dogmas or narrow creeds. Our purpose is to make religion a continuous living experience, to lead us toward a resurrection not of the dead but of the living who are dead to their own truth. Then religion becomes a thread that can both link us to the past and guide us to our future." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"All the philosophy... in the world and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience, or give us measures of conduct and behavior different from those which are furnished by reflections on common life." - David Hume
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." - David Hume
"Divisive forces are more powerful than those which make for union. Vested interests in language, philosophies of life, table manners, sexual habits, political, ecclesiastical and economic organizations are sufficiently powerful to block all attempts, by rational methods, to unite mankind for its own good. And there is nationalism. With the 57 varieties of tribal gods, nationalism is the religion of the 20th century. We may be Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians or Atheists; but the fact remains that there is only one faith for which large masses of us are prepared to die and kill, and that faith is nationalism." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking." - William Ralph Inge
"To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy." - William Ralph Inge
"Too many have no idea of the subjection of their temper to the influence of religion, and yet what is changed, if the temper is not? If a man is as passionate, malicious, resentful, sullen, moody, or morose after his conversion as before it, what is he converted from or to?" - John Angell James