Quotes on Religion and Spirituality

The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "God" with the wrong blocks.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.

Raymond E. Feist

People do more from custom than from reason.

Unknown

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Montaigne

Those who know the least obey the best.

George Farquhar

The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride ..." And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real."

It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

Bill Hicks

Faith does not change your destination.

Duane Alan Hahn

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

Aesop

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

H. G. Wells

That which you condemn will condemn you, and that which you judge, you will one day become.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

Erich Fromm

Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.

Edgar Watson Howe

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

Emerson

The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.

Minna Antrim

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is just as evil to silence an idea as it is to force a belief on someone.

Duane Alan Hahn

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Robert Heinlein

Do you think there is a word I have not heard? A sight I have not seen? A sound I do not know?

Is it your thought that I despise some of these, while I love the others? I tell you, I despise nothing. None of it is repulsive to Me. It is life, and life is the gift; the unspeakable treasure; the holy of holies.

I am life, for I am the stuff life is. Its every aspect has a divine purpose. Nothing exists without a reason understood and approved by God.

You cannot create a thing, not a thought, an object, an event, no experience of any kind which is outside of God's plan. For God's plan is for you to create anything, everything, whatever you want. In such freedom lies the experience of God being God--and this is the experience for which I created You. And life itself.

Evil is that which you call evil. Yet even that I love, for it is only through that which you call evil that you can know good. I do not love hot more than cold, high more than low, left more than right. It's all relative. It is all part of what is.

I do not love "good" more than I love "bad." When you understand this, you will understand God.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Anatole France

Duration is not a test of truth or falsehood.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Abraham Lincoln

A belief is not true because it is useful.

Amiel

The man who says to me, "Believe as I do, or God will damn you," will presently say, "Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you."

Voltaire

To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force.

Hypatia

You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say "God is love" they will claim that you are taking things out of context!

Dan Barker

The Christian god is a three-headed monster, cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three-headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.

Thomas Jefferson

One would no more join Christianity to show love and acceptance than one would become a Nazi to show racial tolerance.

Kelsey Bjarnason

They say that you need to follow their teachings because you cannot be good on your own, but you are never alone. There is never a time when you are separate from God.

Duane Alan Hahn

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

Marquis De Sade

God is not a gangster. Christianity makes you an "offer you can't refuse" by promising Heaven if you accept their propaganda and threatening spiritual torment if you don't.

Duane Alan Hahn

There is no free will if to exercise it in certain ways produces punishment. That makes a mockery of free will and renders it counterfeit.

God from Conversations with God (Book 3) through Neale Donald Walsch

Your happy destiny is unavoidable. You cannot be "saved." There is no hell except not knowing this.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation.

Albert Einstein

Only humans are judgmental, and because you are, you assume that I must be. Yet I am not, and that is the great truth you cannot accept.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Do what I say or burn in hell, is not free will. It's coercion, not freedom.

Duane Alan Hahn

You can't lose the game. You can't go wrong. It's not part of the plan. There is no way not to get where you are going. There's no way to miss your destination. If God is your target, you're in luck, because God is so big, you can't miss.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

Dogmatic religion has been used to fantastic effect over thousands of years to fuel and exploit emotions like fear and guilt, and the feeling of being 'unworthy'. This has encouraged people to hand over their right to think and feel to a Bible and a priest because they have not had the confidence or self-belief to realize that they have a right, and an infinite gift, to make their own decisions

David Icke

The road to God is whatever road you're on.

Duane Alan Hahn

You must stop seeing God as separate from you, and you as separate from each other. Nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else. Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all of life.

God from Conversations with God (Book 2) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Seneca the Younger

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

H. L. Mencken

Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion.

Lemuel K. Washburn

All religions have been made by men.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine

Unknown

Religion is a cage made from other men's thoughts.

Duane Alan Hahn

People always think they know what truth is, like it was toilet paper and they've got a supply of it in their closet

But what you learn as you get older is that there is no truth, There's only bullsh*t. Layers of it. One layer of bullsh*t on top of another.

And what you do in life is pick the layer of bullsh*t you prefer, and that's your bullsh*t.

'Bernie LaPlante' from the movie Hero (adapted) Original Quote at the IMDb

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.

Cyril Connolly

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

Dan Barker

You don't want to know the Truth, you want to know the truth as you understand it. This is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment. You think you already know the truth! You think you already understand how it is. So you agree with everything you see or hear or read that falls into the paradigm of your understanding, and reject everything which does not.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Most people don't like to think. This is why human religions are so popular. It almost doesn't matter what the belief system is, as long as it's firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who believe in almost anything. It's God's way, they say. God's word. And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

H.L. Mencken

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religions in it.

John Adams

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, accept it and live up to it.

Buddha

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Eric Hoffer

There are those who would make Me a jealous God; but who could be jealous when one has, and is, Everything?

There are those who would make Me a wrathful God; but what could cause Me to be angry when I cannot be hurt or damaged in any way?

There are those who would make Me a vengeful God; but on whom would I take vengeance, since all that exists is Me?

And why would I punish Myself for simply creating? Or, if you must think of us as separate, why would I create you, give you the power to create, give you the freedom of choice to create what you wish to experience, then punish you forever for making the "wrong" choice?

I tell you this: I would not do such a thing, and in that truth lies your freedom from the tyranny of God.

In truth, there is no tyranny, except in your own imagination.

God from Conversations with God (Book 2) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Man rejects, ridicules, and retaliates but God embraces, accepts, and forgives.

Duane Alan Hahn

My joy is in your freedom, not your compliance. I do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary for you to serve me. Deity has no needs. "All that is" is exactly that: all that is. It therefore wants or lacks nothing, by definition.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Any being who requires your worship and obedience is not a God.

Duane Alan Hahn

I tell you this: The purpose of life is not to please God. The purpose of life is to know, and to recreate, Who You Are.

God from Conversations with God (Book 2) through Neale Donald Walsch

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H. L. Mencken

The best way to know God is to love many things.

Vincent Van Gogh

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

Graham Greene

Everything is "acceptable" in the sight of God, for how can God not accept that which is? To reject a thing is to deny that it exists.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

You may do as you wish without fear of retribution. It may serve you, however, to be aware of consequences.

Consequences are results. Natural outcomes. These are not at all the same as retributions, or punishments. Outcomes are simply that. They are what results from the natural application of natural laws. They are that which occurs, quite predictably, as a consequence of what has occurred.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

Lenny Bruce

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.

Ghose Aurobindo

Lincoln Six-Echo: What's "God"?

McCord: Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy that ignores you.

From the movie The Island

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

You are not on this planet to produce anything with your body. You are on this planet to produce something with your soul. Your body is simply and merely the tool of your soul. Your mind is the power that makes the body go. So what you have here is a power tool, used in the creation of the soul's desire.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living. Your soul cares only about what you're being while you're doing whatever you're doing.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Atheists and Evolution

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Carl Jung

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There will never be conclusive proof that God exists because that would take away your freedom to believe that there is no God.

Duane Alan Hahn

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

Heywood Broun

How to trap an atheist: Serve him a fine meal, then ask him if he believes there is a cook.

Unknown

Many ex-Christians seem to be as nutty as the Christians they left behind. They turn from gullible Christian to bitter Atheist as if there is no middle ground. They decide there is no God since they can only picture the angry, unfair, jealous, vengeful, judgemental God of the Bible, but that God is a man-made perversion designed to control the mindless masses. The real God truly loves us unconditionally. He/she/it does not require our obedience or our worship. We do not have to believe anything to go to 'Heaven.' There is no eternal reward or punishment for anything we do here in this life. So yes, ex-Christians, Christianity is a cult and you should be glad you got out, but you don't have to throw God out with the murky Christian bath water.

Duane Alan Hahn

An atheist is a man who looks through a telescope and tries to explain all that he can't see.

Unknown

There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who, when danger is pressing in, will not acknowledge the divine power.

Plato

God does not require your belief to exist.

Duane Alan Hahn

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

Francis Bacon

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"

Quentin Crisp

No, My son, the evolutionists are not right. I created all of this—all of this—in the blink of an eye; in one holy instant—just as the creationists have said. And…it came about through a process of evolution taking billions and billions of what you call years, just as the evolutionists claim.

They are both "right." As the cosmonauts discovered, it all depends on how you look at it.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

Some people have a hard time understanding how God can exist. They don't seem to have a problem believing that everything started with an explosion from a tiny point at the center of the universe. But, where did that tiny point come from? It takes as much faith to believe that the universe came from nothing as it does to believe that an intelligent eternal being created it.

Humans, animals, insects, and plants share life span limitations, but it's childish to believe that these limitations must apply to all other life forms in the universe, including God, who is the ultimate life form which encompasses everything.

Things weren't created out of nothing, they were created out of God. God is all and forever.

Duane Alan Hahn

Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man.

Francis Bacon

Why must the truth be either God and creation or no God and evolution? Why couldn't God create our universe, then let the rules of nature guide some type of evolution?

Duane Alan Hahn

The concept of an eternal God may be easier for you to grasp if you can understand that time did not exist before God created this big Matrix-like virtual reality game that we call the universe.

Duane Alan Hahn

When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

God from Futurama (TV series)