Top 100 Quotes About Religious People
#1. Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
Thomas Merton
#2. There are very religious people who write comics and who love comics.
G. Willow Wilson
#3. The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be remembered to their eternal honor.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#4. Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion.
Karen Armstrong
#5. It did something to the temporal lobe, one of the circuits involved in religious experience. It was supposed to put people closer to God. It did that. It also made them slaves.
Ramez Naam
#6. Some people consider the practice of love and compassion is only related to religious practice and if they are not interested in religion they neglect these inner values. But love and compassion are qualities that human beings require just to live together.
Dalai Lama
#7. People joke, in our field, about Pythagoras and his religious cult based on perfect geometry and other abstract mathematical forms, but if we are going to have religion at all then a religion of mathematics seems ideal, because if God exists then what is He but a mathematician?
Matt Haig
#8. 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.
Sam Harris
#9. We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.
Cheryl Strayed
#10. I would like to see the lack of demonization for those of us who stand on sincerely held religious beliefs. It's overdue. That's where you see the demonization of people who stand on their beliefs.
Michele Bachmann
#11. One of the reasons churches in North America have trouble guiding people about money is that the church's economy is built on consumerism. If churches see themselves as suppliers of religious goods and services and their congregants as consumers, then offerings are 'payment.'
Doug Pagitt
#12. I've known a lot of religious people. My mother is very religious, but she also is very private about it. When I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue.
Michael Shannon
#13. Unlike religious people, I look at all religions equally.
Ricky Gervais
#14. Sometimes I talk to religious people about my column or what I do, and I ask them to, you know, read 20 or 30 of them and then come tell me that the message at the heart of every column isn't, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' In every possible sense.
Dan Savage
#15. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'.
Richard Dawkins
#16. All religious beliefs seem weird to people not brought up in them.
Richard Dawkins
#17. Religious people, in the name of the Constitution, are increasingly being shoved to the back of the social bus.
Pat Swindall
#18. I find that those who voted for George W. Bush are less offended by his religious references, and those who voted for Bill Clinton did not seem offended at all when people prayed at his inauguration.
Gwen Ifill
#19. God's Kingdom isn't divided into areas of important people and areas of little people. In God's sight, everyone's needful.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
#20. I predict that the time will come in this once free America when the battle for religious liberty will have to be fought over again, and will probably be lost, because the people are already ignorant of its true basis and conditions.
Robert Dabney
#21. Billions of people, including many scientists, continue to use religious scripture as a source of authority, but these texts are no longer a source of creativity.
Yuval Noah Harari
#22. While some people are apprehensive that meditation may conflict with their beliefs, the usual experience is that it leads to a heightened appreciation of their particular religious leanings and a greater level of personal joy
Ian Gawler
#23. You can't pray away global warming, and that's the difference between religious people and sane people.
Bill Maher
#24. I hear people say all the time, "I'm not really religious, but I consider myself spiritual." I definitely have always been spiritual, being raised by my grandmother on that little acre in Mississippi, indoctrinated, born into the church and the ways of the church.
Oprah Winfrey
#25. In the bible homosexuality is condemned, but along with divorce and greed and callousness toward poor people. So its elevation to a highest priority among some religious groups has been very disturbing to me.
Jimmy Carter
#26. I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss.
Frank Zappa
#27. Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.
Tom Lehrer
#28. God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all - no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.
Ronald J. Sider
#29. Genghis Khan decreed religious tolerance for all of his conquered peoples. So I think he definitely would approve of our constitutional protections of freedom of religion. I think he would also approve of the way the U.S. has been able to attract talented people from all over the world.
Amy Chua
#30. I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective.
Mallory Ortberg
#31. It has been religious people, often within the organized church, who have been the most critical of and even hostile to my relationship with God.
Anne Graham Lotz
#32. Dear young people, do not bury your talents, the gifts that god has given you! Do not be afraid to dream of great things!
Pope Francis
#33. Religious people of any serious kind made her nervous: they were like men in raincoats who might or might not be flashers.
Margaret Atwood
#34. In Western lands there is a distinct division between the religious and the secular life. There is one rule of conduct for laymen and another for clergymen. This distinction has never found its place in the life of the people of India. There, all of life is included in the word 'religion.'
Virchand Gandhi
#35. We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.
William O. Douglas
#36. The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.
Richard Dawkins
#37. The idea of an Afrikaner people as a cultural entity and religious group with a special language will be retained in South Africa as long as civilisation stands.
P. W. Botha
#38. Often our students see nothing about religious faith except the lowest common denominator. They see nothing but TV evangelists and fools, and it doesn't occur to them that intelligent people might find this religious business worth living their lives by.
Doris Betts
#39. The problem with most religious people is they try to earn grace but you can't earn it. And as long as you're trying to earn it by works, you don't receive it. At some point you just have to stop trying to earn it and just receive it.
Derek Prince
#40. I believe in any religion that puts treating people with respect and dignity above ritual and dogma.
Charles F. Glassman
#41. People in the church should not accept the notion that the public square is off limits to religious values.
Lloyd Billingsley
#42. Convinced that the attachment of colonies to the metropolis, depends infinitely more upon moral and religious feeling, than political arrangement, or even commercial advantage, I cannot but lament that more is not done to instill it into the minds of the people.
John Strachan
#43. It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable.
Jane Asher
#44. Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.
Mark Twain
#45. There is nothing in the genius of America more precious today than the spirit of religious and political tolerance in its application to our own people.
Paul Harris
#46. A good storyteller minces words to entertain or inspire the audience. The politicians and religious leaders do much the same, but for a different purpose - to turn otherwise normal people to nutcases.
Vinko Vrbanic
#47. You know, when people who were once religious no longer believe in God, they never really change; they just go on, hunting for the ecstatic food, trying to satisfy that hunger.
Andrew Holleran
#48. Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.
Karen Armstrong
#49. My teaching - of what is perceived to be a complex and foreign sounding religious philosophy - has become the target for people's prejudice and religious intolerance.
Frederick Lenz
#50. As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.
Dave Barry
#51. No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren't religious, you can learn things from religious people.
Steve Coogan
#52. I guess my religious faith sustained me more than anything else. Family is also very important. If I didn't have children, it would have been too difficult. Even if you are strong, you still need people who would support you all the way.
Corazon Aquino
#53. The time has now come to amend the Constitution to restore freedom of speech for America's people of faith.
Ralph E. Reed Jr.
#54. There are things about our world that almost by their nature defy our ability to comprehend them. Some people use a religious register to deal with that - they call it God and that's a way of domesticating it.
Hari Kunzru
#55. I think having some sort of religious faith can be helpful for many people, because it kind of puts things in perspective a bit.
Dave Smalley
#56. We suffer because we have no humility and we do not love our brother. From love of our brother comes the love of God. People do not learn humility, and because of their pride cannot receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, and therefor the whole world suffers.
Silouan The Athonite
#57. Some countries and some people are so primitively religious and so underdeveloped that they don't need a time machine to go back to the past; they are already in there, in the very distant and dark past!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#58. The American experiment was frequently shaped by a rejection of old ways and openness to the new. In religious terms, this rejection created over time a nation unique in its ability to absorb and be built by those of different beliefs; people who believed there were many gods, or none at all.
Peter Manseau
#59. I think a lot of the shame-based religious and political methodology has more to do with keeping people contained than with setting them free. And I'm no fan of it.
Donald Miller
#60. It is not only a matter, I believe, of religious observance and practice. To me, being Jewish means and has always meant being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than 2,000 years, with all the pain and torment that has been inflicted upon it
Golda Meir
#61. I have received many touching letters and emails from people who live in the most religious parts of the country, in places like rural Texas, saying it is so good to see someone be able to say I am an atheist without shame.
Susan Jacoby
#62. Love must be regarded as one of the religious and dangerous experiences, because it lifts people out of the arms of reason and sets them afloat with no ground under their feet.
Robert Musil
#63. Most of the Palestinians don't understand what they're doing.Politically, people can say what they want. The problem is not political, but religious.
Shimon Peres
#64. I believe that the real expression of your religious beliefs is shown in the daily pattern of your life, in what you contribute to your surroundings and what you take away without infringing on the rights of other people.
Judy Garland
#65. Jess wasn't religious. Not even a little bit. She thought all gods were basically big bully-boy cops dreamed up by people who wanted the laws they liked on Earth to be true everywhere else.
M.R. Carey
#66. Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
Wendy Kaminer
#67. I absolutely believe that people should show respect to everybody, regardless of their lifestyle, regardless of their beliefs, religious beliefs or any other kind of belief.
Rick Warren
#68. Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people.
Thomas A. Edison
#69. The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.
Christopher Lasch
#71. I am not conventionally religious, but I am an ongoing student of the Old and the New Testament and the history of the Jewish people and the birth of Christianity.
Robert Littell
#72. It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it?
John Shelby Spong
#73. Do not make your mind a dumping ground for other people's garbage.
Ezra Taft Benson
#74. I think very few people realize how much the separation of church and state has to do with the fact that Americans are not only more religious than a lot of other people in the world but that conversions are much more common here.
Susan Jacoby
#75. If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.
Mary Douglas
#76. I grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, in New York. My parents were very religious churchgoing people. They were very strict. I was never really allowed to indulge in anything vain. Modesty always. I have three brothers and two sisters, so everything was on a budget.
Wynter Gordon
#77. I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.
Walter Gilbert
#78. Religious people ... hold a kind and merciful view of life, the faith of the broken, the hounded, the hopeless. Yet too often, they will not extend that spirit to our fellow creatures.
Matthew Scully
#79. The Court explained the problem with his writings (People v. Ruggles. 1811.): an attack on Jesus Christ was an attack on Christianity; and an attack on Christianity was an attack on the foundation of the country; therefore, an attack on Jesus Christ was equivalent to an attack on the country!
David Barton
#80. And call no man your father on earth ... " No religious leader is to be called father. How clear is that? Don't call people "father" for " ... you have one Father who is in heaven" (v. 9).
James MacDonald
#81. Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.
Robert Winston
#82. No matter how powerful our political and religious leaders think they are, they are as dust before the immense and implacable forces of history and progress. I just hope that they don't make too much of a mess or take too many more people down with them.
Alan Moore
#83. I think a misconception among many non-religious people is that anyone with a strong faith is, in all ways and at all times, blindly consistent, unwavering, unquestioning.
Alice McDermott
#84. Forget your religious superstitions built by cults and learn to love for the sake of humanity."-Stated after hearing a man use religion to justify and warrant hatred of people based on differences put forth by his spiritual beliefs. Oddly enough I happen to be very superstitious myself!
Rickey Russell
#85. Religious people were big on saying "the tongue is a mighty weapon, so use it wisely," and then forsaking this claim when the music director slept with the minister's wife or when the youth minister did what he did.
Tiffany King
#86. Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business. I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you'd want them to treat you. The religious right wants to tell people how to live.
Jesse Ventura
#87. Normally most religious people will talk 'at' you for GOD. But spiritual people will talk 'with' you about GOD.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
#88. Why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species?
Brian D. McLaren
#89. Even if you're not a Catholic, even if you're not a Christian, in fact even if you have no religious faith at all, what people could see in Pope John Paul was a man of true and profound spiritual faith.
Chris Matthews
#90. I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
Daniel Dennett
#91. It's almost impossible to deal with a crazy man, except that he does have religious beliefs, and the world of Islam will be damaged if a fanatic like him should commit murder in the name of religion against 60 innocent people.
Ruhollah Khomeini
#92. Here in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for everybody.
Karen Armstrong
#93. The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America's propaganda-savvy gun-pimps. It's believed by people who don't read novels, play video games, or go to many movies
Stephen King
#94. Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.
Saul Bellow
#95. I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.
Bertrand Russell
#96. The only people who had authority within the Church to stop Brendan Smyth from having contact with children were his Abbot in the Monastery in Kilnacrott and his Religious Superiors in the Norbertine Order.
Sean Brady
#97. Sometimes," Shearl said, "people need to be reminded that God is real.
Crystal McVea
#98. A doctor is not a religious man. You should never give people vague hope or possibility.
Kim Du-han
#99. Being a purely instrumental album, it makes a musical statement, not a religious one, and I hope that people can feel the emotion of the great melodies, even without the words.
Kenny G
#100. At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm.
Catherine Hicks
