One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
-Thomas Paine
"The Age Of Reason"
Quotations
Religion
We are so interested in religion that first we put the person who has come to
awaken us to sleep. Then making him God, we establish such a religion around
him that we don't face any obstacle in perpetrating the violence, jealousy, partiality,
lies, cheating, fraud or pretence as we desire; and simultaneously adhering to
few hypocrisies, also remain proud of being religious.
-Deep Trivedi
Universal religion has no location in time or space. Its area is infinite, like the God it preaches. It is an experience. It is God-consciousness… All religions are challenged today by a common enemy: the rising tide of skepticism and secularism.
-A Spiritual Leader "Swami Nikhilananda"
We are quite bizarre ourselves, so are our religious heads too. Merely to satiate
our pride we visit them to listen to good things about our religion and they being
clever take undue advantage of it, pander to our ego and continue to prosper.
This blinds us so much that we stop seeing the negativities of our religion and
positive aspects of other religions. You cannot even imagine what a great loss it
is for you.
-Deep Trivedi
Those who are ignorant of the supreme purpose of life will never be able to attain nirvana (liberation) in spite of their observance of the vratas (vows) and niyamas (rules) of religious conduct and practice of shila (celibacy) and tapas (penance).
-Scriptures "Samayasara, 153"
Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.
-Jasper Fforde
"The Eyre Affair"
The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.
-Karl Marx
"There is nothing like a vice or a virtue" and it has been said many a times in the
Bhagavad Gita by Krishna himself. Then why do these saints keep frightening
us everyday by reading out the long list of vices?
-Deep Trivedi
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
-Alan Wilson Watts
Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous... In the infinite extent of the universe, it is a direction of the heart.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
