This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is in the last analysis the end of religion." - James Henry Leuba
"Nobody ought to be compelled in matters of religion either by law or force." - John Locke
"The worst kind of religion is no religion at all." - James Russell Lowell
"Religion is proposed not as a transcendent revelation of the nature of man and the world, but as a means of weathering the storms of life, or of deepening one’s spiritual existence, or of preserving the social order, or of warding off anxiety." - Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman
"A religion would not be worth my adherence if I could live up to it perfectly." - John Geddes MacGregor
"The plainest historical evidence for the effectiveness of religion as a positive social form lies in the history of the Jews." - John Macmurray
"Religion is about fellowship and community… The task of religion is the maintenance and extension of human community." - John Macmurray
"It is clearly untrue that we are automatically progressing and that the Churches and religion ought to hasten to adjust themselves to all the novelties of our age." - Karl Mannheim, alternatively Mannheim Károly
"Religion, like everything great and noble and demanding within us, increases the tension in mankind; and together with the tension, suffering; and with the suffering, spiritual effort; and with the spiritual effort, joy." - Jacques Maritain
"In the so-called Western secular democracy… a divorce has been effected between politics and religion, and as a result of this secularization, the society and particularly its politically active elements have ceased to attach much or any importance to morality or ethics." - Abu’l A’la Mawdudi
"Religion, according to the Hindu, is not compounded of dogmas and creeds. Religion is a way of life in consonance with rationality and Truth. Truth is not and cannot be revealed once and for all - it must ever be a progressive revelation." - Harold F. Mazumdar
"Life is a mission. Every other definition of life 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." - Joseph Mazzini, aka Giuseppe Mazzini
"Of all human and long-existent beliefs concerning religion, that one seems to me to be most probable and most justifiable which recognizes God as a power incomprehensible, source and preserver of all things; all goodness, all perfection, receiving and accepting in good part the honor and reverence which human beings render him under whatever form, under whatever name, and in whatever manner it may be." -
"When an apostle seeks to win a soul to religion… he appeals to understanding, not to imagination, for he knows that his task is not to create something, but to call aloud to that which is slumbering in the depths of the heart." - Maria Montessori
"To apply the laws of the spirit to the activities of this earth is at once a desecration and denial of religion, and a bewildering and unsettling of the social order." - Paul Elmer More
"Organized religion is too respectable, too much at home in America, and so too much inclined to abdicate its responsibility as a judge of society." - Herbert J. Muller
"The essence of right conduct is not to injure anyone; one should know only this, that non-injury is religion." - Naladiyar, or The Naladiyar NULL
"Religion consisteth not in mere works; he who looketh on all men as equal is religious." - Guru Nanak
"Protestant philosophers of religion have been concerned above all with the “meaning of God in human experience,” “religious values,” and “the source of human good.” Their thinking has been value-centered rather than God-centered." - Arnold Samuel Nash
"True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgment; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers." - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
"Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?" - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
"The one perfect definition of religion is The Life of God in the Soul of Man." - Joseph Fort Newton
"Toleration… is not true liberty when it is only a gracious concession by the state to the individual. Gracious concessions are incompatible with liberty of religion which is not something that a state, or an absolutist church offers, but that which the citizen claims and the law protects." - Cecil Northcott
"Many people are turning to religion as they would to a benign sedative, to soothe their nerves and to settle their minds." - Patrick O’Boyle, fully Patrick Aloysius O'Boyle, Cardinal O'Boyle
"Religion floods our darkness with a divine light… Religion brings into the focus of attention the two supreme values - God and the human soul." - John A. O’Brien
"Religion in its true sense emphasizes the insight into our experiences and the consciousness that insists upon learning something from them." - Carol Ochs
"All noble art, with all noble religion, breathes gratitude for life... Great art is a song of praise, an overflowing of life back to its source, a dithramb of thanksgiving and gratitude." - Alfred Richard Orage
"When opinions are free, either in matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail." - Thomas Paine
"It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civic Virtue... it is a Weakness in Religion and Government where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since... Liberty is always the Price of it." - William Penn
"Religion is nothing else but love of God and man." - William Penn
"The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious, and Devout Souls, are everywhere of one religion; when Death has taken off the Mask, they will know one another, tho’ the divers Liveries they wear here make them Strangers." - William Penn
"Strange inconsistency! to persecute in the name of religion those who had given the religion." - Madison C. Peters, fully Madison Clinton Peters
"Religion is man’s sense of the disposition of the universe to himself." - James Bisset Pratt
"Religion indeed wishes to be useful and beautiful, but it also means to be true." - James Bisset Pratt
"A study of comparative religion gives insight into the values of the various faiths, values which transcend different symbols and creeds and in transcending penetrate to the depths of the spiritual consciousness where the symbols and formulas shrink into insignificance." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"Religion is behavior and not mere belief." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"We miss the true spirit of religion if we recommend it on account of its secular advantages." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion." - Red Jacket, aka Sagoyewatha NULL
"You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us, as well as you, whey has not the Great Spirit given to tus, and not only to us, but what did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people? Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?" - Red Jacket, aka Sagoyewatha NULL
"You say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?" - Red Jacket, aka Sagoyewatha NULL
"Money is the standard now. It’s the new religion. We have two religions in this country, fundamentalism and money, and I don’t know which is worse. I don’t see the death of greed. I see people worried that they may have come along a couple of years too late." - Felix Rohatyn, fully Felix George Rohatyn
"Religion can be the greatest blessings or the greatest of curses. Historically it seems to have been both." - David Lokhelevich Rosenberg
"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The grand premise of religion is that man is able to surpass himself; that man who is apart of this world may enter into a relationship with Him who is greater than the world." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The roots of ultimate insights are found not on the level of discursive thinking, but on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery, in our awareness of the ineffable. It is the level on which the great things happen to the soul, where the unique insights of art, religion, and philosophy come into being." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The religion of man… has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau