Religious Quotes - Page 256

Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others.

Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on 'revealed truths') literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it.

The worst thing about religion was religious people.

Fundamentalism is a 20th-century phenomenon, but that kind of religious fervor actually has not always been associated with conservative goals.

The Family is the oldest and arguably most influential religious political organization in Washington.

The United States Constitution is clear. It prohibits religious tests for public office.

Throughout the history of medicine, including the shamanic healing traditions, the Greek tradition of Asclepius, Aristotle and Hippocrates, and the folk and religious healers, the imagination has been used to diagnose disease.

Prohibiting a visible religious sign, which isn't a manifestation of militancy, would look like a fight against religions.

I thought that coming out was going to be the end of my religious life but actually it was the beginning. Because it only afterwards that I could be honest about who I was, what I wanted, how I understood spirituality.

Ashcroft went on to say that our way of life is being threatened by a group of radical religious fanatics who are armed and dangerous. And then he called for prayers in the schools and an end to gun control.

Scientific thought - indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else - is just like the fashions that we wear - only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.

If you can go out with your live show and turn people on to that, where you have that fan base that's religious and they're going to come see you when you're in that town, once your radio success is gone and you're not a mainstream guy anymore you can still go out and play your shows.

Primarily, Warsaw and Brussels share the central basic values of the EU: human dignity, democracy, and the religious freedom of every single human being. We believe in these values.

I don't believe in religious tests, and I don't believe my religion is all that important to the people I represent. And I think there's too much religion in politics.

When a cult grows up, it becomes a culture.

The English monarchy is at best symbolic, whereas the Saudi monarchy is a bloodline, but it's also showing itself as a very primitive culture. So, I think we're moving further and further away from that kind of organization of humanity and the same I would say with religion. I think that organized religions, with the exception of Islam, are really falling by the wayside. People are starting to understand that the religious potential is within and that it's an individual pursuit.

I think of myself as a highly spiritual person, but without - I was never really given a religion or a religious experience or a community to sort of subscribe to.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

Many people have overcome that home situation simply by having at least one caring adult, whether a teacher, mentor or religious leader.

Attacks on alternative religious groups are attempts to psychologize - to medicalize - a controversy that, on deeper examination, is clearly a controversy over ideology and lifestyle.

I have experienced racism in this country. My children have experienced racism in this country. I wouldn't say America is against me. It is not an either/or proposition. But there are some people who hold fast to certain religious beliefs.

Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. ISIS cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity. We're going to strip them of any kind of legitimacy.

I think as we look at this problem of ISIS, it's more than just an army. It's also a fight about ideas. And we have got to dry up their recruiting. We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They have - they cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity.

I have received your letter of the 6th, with the eloquent discourse delivered at the consecration of the Jewish Synagogue. Having ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect, and the secure enjoyment of it as the best human provision for bringing all either into the same way of thinking, or into that mutual charity which is the only substitute, I observe with pleasure the view you give of the spirit in which your sect partake of the blessings offered by our Government and laws.