Great Throughts Treasury

"Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism." - William James

"Religion, whatever it is, is man’s total reaction upon life." - William James

"Religion is not an opiate, for religion does not help people to forget, but to remember. It does not dull people. IT does not say, Take, but Give." - Bede Jarrett

"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad... freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation." - Thomas Jefferson

"There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear." -

"A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick, than a man who has never learned figures can count when he has need of calculation." -

"To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant and which is animated only by Faith and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example." -

"True religion... must be basically universalistic, must proclaim and strive for ultimate world-unity." - Christian Morgenstern

"[Paraphrase] The function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Every psychological problem is ultimately a matter of religion." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"The function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God. [paraphrased]" - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Religion is the individual's attitude toward God and man as expressed in faith, in worship, in life, and in service." - Charles Foster Kent

"What I want is, not to possess religion, but to have a religion that shall possess me." - Charles Kingsley

"How shall man obtain conception of the majesty of the Divine...? Through the expansion of his scientific faculties; through the liberation of his imagination...; through the disciplined study of the world and of life; through the cultivation of a rich, multifarious sensitivity to every phase of being. All these desiderata require obviously the study of all the branches of wisdom, all the philosophies of life, all the ways of the diverse civilizations and doctrines of ethics and religion in every nation and tongue." - Abraham Isaac Kook

"When a man is on a low cultural level, he can satisfy his spiritual needs with outward religious observances; but as he becomes more highly developed, he wants to grasp the spirit of religion." - Nachman Kohen Krochmal, aka Ranak

"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Organized religion obviously prevents the understanding of a problem because the mind is conditioned by dogma and belief." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Religion is really experiencing a state in which there is creation. This is not an idea, a process. It can be realized when there is freedom from self. There can be freedom from self only through understanding the self in relationship; but there can be no understanding in isolation." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Every sect is a moral check on its neighbor. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce." - Walter Savage Landor

"Who can reflect on the sacredness of human life, in view of its eternal destinies, without coming to the conclusion that war, with its attendants, hatred, destruction and slaughter is incompatible with the high dictates of religion?" - Leone Levi

"The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." - John Locke

"What is false in science cannot be true in religion. Truth is one and invisible. God is bound by His own laws." - Loewe, fully Frederick Loewe, aka Fritz NULL

"Over all the movements of life religion scatters her favors, but reserves the choicest, her divine blessing, for the last hour." -

"Judaism looks upon all human beings as children of one Father; thinks of them as all created in the image of God, and insists that a man be judged not by his religion, but his action." - Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL

"Religion to be permanently influential must be intelligent." - Elias L. Magoon

"Religion would not have enemies, if it were not an enemy to their vices." - John Baptiste Massillon

"We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for." -

"Life is a mission. Every other definition is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim." - Guiseppe Mazzini

"The religion of humanity is love." - Guiseppe Mazzini

"I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business, pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do con amore." -

"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind-that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"My religion is to live - and die - without regret." - Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL

"As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life." - C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills

"Without a Sabbath, no worship; without worship, no religion; and without religion, no permanent freedom." - Charles Forbes Montalembert, fully Charles Forbes René de Montalembert, aka Charles le Comte de Montalembert

"How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same timed the highest happiness of this." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Men are extremely inclined to the passions of hope and fear; a religion, therefore, that had neither a heaven nor a hell could hardly please them." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Religion is less a matter of holiness than an excuse for dispute." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"The pious man and the atheist always talk of religion; the one speaks of what he loves, and the other of what he fears." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Wherever religion is a business, there will business be a religion." -

"I feel that just understanding near-death experiences will be our first step at healing the great division between science and religion that started with Isaac Newton almost three hundred years ago. Educating physicians, nurses, and ourselves about what people experience in those final hours will shatter our prejudices about the ways we think about medicine and life." - Melvin L. Morse

"The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history." - Justus Möser

"True religion is surrender." -

"The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is not even enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion." - Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL

"Reverence the highest; have patience with the lowest. Let this day’s performance of the meanest duty be thy religion." -

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system." - Thomas Paine

"Every religion is good that teaches man to be good." - Thomas Paine

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." - Thomas Paine

"Religion without joy - it is no religion." - Joseph Parker