Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous... In the infinite extent of the universe, it is a direction of the heart.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Quotations
Religion
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"
I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.
-Philip Pullman
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
Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
-George Bernard Shaw
The foundation of Hindu religion has been laid on the pillar of tolerance. It
has revered all the rebels like Buddha, Kabira, Shankaracharya, Chanakya,
Dayanand Saraswati who had opposed the prevalent hypocrisies in their times.
It didn't kill them the way reformers like Jesus, Socrates or Mansoor were...
Then where did this Hindu fanaticism emerge from?... Perhaps in order to make
their businesses survive, it is being propagated by the Hindu religious heads.
-Deep Trivedi
Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.
-Robert G. Ingersoll
Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.
-Thomas Paine
