Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is my hope that inter-religious and ecumenical cooperation will demonstrate that men and women do not have to forsake their identity, whether ethnic or religious, in order to live in harmony with their brothers and sisters. If we are honest in presenting our convictions, we will be able to see more clearly what we hold in common.
The United States...has a warm and a unique relationship of friendship with Israel that is morally right. It is compatible with our deepest religious convictions, and it is right in terms of America's own strategic interests. We are committed to Israel's security, prosperity, and future as a land that has so much to offer the world.
Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture — and making a blanket judgment about the world’s second largest religion — is simply bigotry.
Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
I want to say to you is that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did not intend to drive a stake in the heart of religion and to drive it out of our public life. What they intended to do was to set up a system so that we could bring religion into our public life and into our private life without any of us telling the other what to do.
The traditional spokespersons for the Evangelicals, such as Chuck Colson and James Dobson, have become alarmed about this drift away from the 'Family Values' issues that they believe should be the overwhelming concerns of Evangelicals. They have expressed their displeasure in letters of protest circulated through the religious media.
We may very well wake up in the not-too-distant future in a culture that is not only unreceptive but openly hostile to the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ, a culture in which those who proclaim the gospel will be labeled as bigots and fanatics, a culture in which persecution of Christians will be not only allowed but applauded.
I was raised in a religious home. It was unreasonable enforced religion that turned me off it. It was a joyless, unpleasant, stupid, barbaric thing when I was a child and I've never gotten over that feeling. If you're talking about religion it's one thing; I don't hold Jewish religion with any more seriousness than I would any other.
Justification by religious performances, and meritorious deeds, is nothing better than the old Pharisaism with a Christian name stuck upon it. . . That doctrine makes the Lord Jesus Christ to be practically a nobody; for if salvation be of works, then the way of salvation through faith in a Savior is superfluous, and even mischievous
Worship in truth is worship that arises out of an actual encounter with God, a response to the experience of knowing God's real presence and activity in our daily lives. This has nothing to do with sentiment, thinking religious thoughts or having aesthetic experiences in church buildings; any religion can give you that sort of thing.
Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.
Avan was as religious as the next young dragon with his way to make in the world-which is to say that he held many traditional beliefs which he had never paused to examine, attended church because it would have seemed strange not to, rarely paid much attention when he was there, and found piety out of the pulpit thoroughly misplaced.
The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God on the earth will be combined together at Christ's coming - and that time is not far distant. How I wish we could get the vision of this work, the genius of it, and realize the nearness of that great event. I am sure it would have a sobering effect upon us if we realized what is before us.
I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.
We now live in a 'post-Christian' America . The Judeo-Christian ethic no longer guides our social institutions. Christian ideals and values no longer dominate social thought and action. The Bible has ceased to be a common base of moral authority for judging whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable.
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, 'a matter of choosing what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy.
Being holy . . . does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being exceptionally religious or being religious at all; it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it meas being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human.
We have a war on women, race wars. Income wars, age wars, religious wars, anything you can imagine. A house divided against itself cannot stand it. And it's going to be up to us, to people, to begin the focus on the positive things, on the things that we have in common and stop listening to those who are stoking the fires of division.
Perhaps the worst example of Smithsonian contempt for Jesus Christ is seen in its 1994 publication of a coffee-table book entitled Smithsonian Time Lines of the Ancient World ... This flagrant display of religious bigotry and discrimination in a book officially sponsored by the Smithsonian is intellectually and academically dishonest.
It is not coincidental that for so-called religious fundamentalists - whether they are Western or Eastern, Muslim or Christian - rigid male dominance and "holy wars" are priorities. Or that competing sects of the same religion, such as Sunni and Shia, are at each other's throats. In these cultures, women are rigidly controlled by men.
Books were rare,expensive, time-consuming to create and copy, and difficult to transport. That is why collections ofprint-based books developed around centers of religious belief, learning, and wealth. It was cheaper andeasier for people to come to the collection than for the collection, or parts of the collection, to go to thepeople.
I would not have suffered my name to have been used by my friends on anywise as President of the United States, or candidate for that office, if I and my friends could have had the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil rights as American citizens, even those rights which the Constitution guarantees unto all her citizens alike.
Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.
The principal sponsors of the terrorists are not religious fanatics. "Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Syria's Assad family have made themselves the icons of Islamism despite the fact that they are well-known atheists who live un-Muslim lives and have persecuted unto death the Muslim movements in their countries."
One can't imagine a Hollywood film whose entire purpose was to ridicule, say, homosexual activists, feminists, animal rights crusaders, or environmentalists. That would be blasphemy. Hollywood understands that religious people, particularly Christians, are the last group in America besides businessmen who may be defamed with impunity.
What made al-Awlaki so influential is that, unlike a number of leaders of al Qaeda such as Osama bin Laden, he was a cleric, so he could present himself as a leading religious figure. Second, because al-Awlaki had spent much of his adult life in the States, he communicated with his followers in colloquial, accessible American English.
What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion—romantic passion, religious passion, passion for work and for play, passionate commitments in the face of what reason knows to be meaningless.
You can go to places in Africa and Asia and find Marley graffiti. In the slums of Nairobi, you see his lyrics painted on walls, and you realise he has this almost religious significance to the underclass of the world. He's a guy born in a hut with no bed, and now he's probably the most listened-to artist in the world. It's fascinating.
What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.
In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality.
The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation.
Our society is not held together primarily by law and its enforcement but most importantly by those who voluntarily obey the unenforceable because of their internalized norms of righteous or correct behavior. Religious belief in right and wrong is a vital influence to produce such voluntary compliance by a large number of our citizens.
As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals --or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy.
Sure I am a religious man who is also passionate about conserving the environment. But I am also a CEO, with all the bad habits and attitudes that are natural to the species. . . . I am still naturally self-interested, overconfident, full of pride, and eager to control a meeting as any CEO in America. Every day, I struggle with my ego.
To assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason. Two forces within the individual contribute to the development of his conscience and of his morality: reason and sensitivity.
The more you remember, the more you are able to experience, the more you know, so to speak. And the more you know, the more you remember. It is a circle... But remember, none of it has been exactly a drudge. I mean, you've loved all of it! Every last minute! Oh, it's delicious, this thing called life! It's a scrumptious experience, no?
My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.
The religious training inspired in me a desire for learning. In fact, I am immensely grateful for my Catholic education for instilling in me a desire for learning. However, the Catholic training also gave me a desire for questioning. The desire to question led me eventually to distance myself from the Catholic institution and its dogma.
Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. A number of my fellow religious-studies students - muddled agnostics who didn't know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fool's gold for the bright - reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God.
However, in brief, I think the connecting of 'God' and 'Being' is one of these things for which there seems to be a natural impulse in human thinking but it can also lead to confusions. Religious believers mostly want to see God as the epitome of what is most really real and in some non-theistic contexts, people talk simply of 'Isness'.
Suicide terrorist groups are [not] religious cults isolated from the rest of their society, ... Rather, suicide terrorist organizations often command broad social support within the national communities from which they recruit, because they are seen as pursuing legitimate nationalist goals, especially liberation from foreign occupation.
It's not about superheroes. This is the method of universal storytelling that all people have... To me, they're the same as the Greek myths or the Roman myths or religious figures of every religion. These are common characters that we use to express stories about being a better person or what you would do when faced with various things.
You have two choices with Obama. You either believe that he is a man of Christ... or you think he's a liar. And I'm surprised by the number of atheist free thinkers that support Obama, and their argument is essentially, 'He's lying about being religious 'cause you have to do that to get elected.' It's a horrible reason to like somebody.
Do not say that faith in Christ alone can save you, for this is not possible if you do not attain love for Him, which is demonstrated by deeds. As for mere faith: "The demons also believe and tremble" (James, 2:19). The action of love consists in heartfelt good deeds toward one's neighbor, magnanimity, patience, and sober use of things.
I grew up in a religious family and, like, that was a very big part of my life, and still, very much, is even though I don't affiliate with any specific religion. It's just, for me, you know, the spirituality of being able to own up to your sins, as they're called, and take responsibility for your actions really hit me this time around.
The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "My Companions are as stars. Whomsoever of them you follow, you will be rightly guided." When a man looks at a star, and finds his way by it, the star does not speak any word to that man. Yet, by merely looking at the star, the man knows the road from roadlessness and reaches his goal.
It is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right.
Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom.