Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.
I was very religious when I was younger. I went to a seminary for three years, studied to be a priest, and um, so that sort of natural idealism just um sort of carried over into my feelings about joining the army.
Her [Jurdge Sandra Day O'Connor] judgment has also been critical in protecting our environmental rights. She joined in 5-4 majorities affirming reproductive freedom and religious freedom and the Voting Rights Act.
Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.
I feel it is far better to begin with God, to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another. In general it is best to have at least one hour alone with God before engaging in anything else.
I don't care if you are religious or not and I think the message is that at the end of the day, everybody has to mature and everybody has to heal and mend their own injuries, emotional injuries, on their own pace.
Very much indeed of what we call moral education is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.
We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son.
The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.
Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses.
Another way of judging the value of a prophet's religious experience, therefore, would be to examine the type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung out of the spirit of his message.
I don't need your organization, I've moved your mountains and I've marked you cards, but Eden is burning. You better get ready for elimination or else your hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guard.
For those who may not find happiness to exercise religious faith, it's okay to remain a radical atheist; it's absolutely an individual right, but the important thing is with a compassionate heart - then no problem.
Normally, we think of the religious as people who care more, not less than the rest of us. This is not true, not exactly. The truly religious care more deeply about fewer things and do't give a hoot about the rest.
The only foundation for . . . a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.
I can't understand people calling themselves religious and being hateful. If a preacher is preaching hate, to fear God that's not religion, that's not helping humanity, that's organizing an army to defeat somebody.
For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.
It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.
Syria is the proud heir of an ancient civilization that has a unique spectrum of minorities that encompasses Muslims and Christians of various denominations. There are at least ten such ethnic and religious groups.
[Music] is the one thing that connects the dots in all kinds of ways. No matter how you were brought up, no matter what your religious background or political beliefs, people still love to sing along with somebody.
The ceremonial and religious uses of psychedelics are much older than their recreational uses and abuses. For most of their history, they have been mysterious, dangerous substances and must be treated respectfully.
In perplexities-when we cannot tell what to do, when we cannot understand what is going on around us, let us be calmed and steadied and made patient by the thought that what is hidden from us is not hidden from Him
We will not stand for it any more. No more lies. No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war. No more inhumanity.
When people say, 'Religion is all right for some, but I am not religious, and it means nothing to me,' is it because they have not experienced the uplift that comes from sacrificing for and serving their fellowmen?
The movie industry would never purposely offend homosexuals, native Americans, environmentalists, animal rights activists, or women's groups, but they don't think twice about something that might offend Christians.
One of the most popular current errors, and the one out of which springs most of the noisy, blustering religious activity in evangelical circles, is the notion that as times change the church must change with them.
Doing is a function of the body. Being is a function of the soul. The body is always doing something. Every minute of every day it's up to something. It never stops, it never rests, it's constantly doing something.
Nuns? They'd take one look at Barrons and decide the devil himself had come knockng. He not only looked dangerous, he emanated something that made even me feel like crossing myself sometimes, and I'm not religious.
Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children.
There is no danger of exaggerating. We an never hope to fathom this inexpressible mystery nor will we ever be able to give sufficient thanks to our Mother for bringing us into such intimacy with the Blessed Trinity.
Mr. Lincoln's maxim and philosophy were: 'What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.' He never joined any Church. He was a religious man always, I think, but was not a technical Christian.
Lenin, Stalin, and Rakosi recognized that a renewed and purified Christianity was the only force that could move the masses as powerfully as the Marxist ideal could. They attacked it as the enemy that it was and is.
As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right.
The distinction between the religious and secular orders is a fundamental aspect of Christianity. This distinction is an innovation compared to Islam and Judaism, and it is an advantage that has helped shape Europe.
When I became an adult, I had absolutely nothing against drinking alcohol. Many of my friends drank. I would often make wine and offer it, but I never sat down and drank it myself. That affect my religious practice.
Life becomes religious whenever we make it so: when some new light is seen, when some deeper appreciation is felt, when some larger outlook is gained, when some nobler purpose is formed, when some task is well done.
As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side.
It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
I think that really what our training, what our culture, our religious institutions, our educational and cultural institutions should be about is preparing the heart for that journey outside of the cage of the ribs.
In the 1980s... it was a liberal philosophy of government that changed the rules to suit its own political ends. We were forfeiting our freedoms to conform to a humanistic philosophy that was patently antireligious.
The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.
In novels like 'Kaaterskill Falls', I've been able to write sympathetically about religious people - and beyond that, I've been able to take a religious point of view - because belief does not anger or embarrass me.
Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.
The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children
That such a perspective of the Declaration's 'Creator God' should sound so foreign and controversial to people today is a tragic and striking sign of how far we are removed from the thinking of our colonial fathers.
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.
Feel eternity around you. Not as an idea, not as a nice intellectualization, but to really feel it; not to be some religious fanatic who's strung out on some weird idea of salvation to the exclusion of common sense.
I want to host a religious show. I'm sure nobody will be wanting the 11 o'clock spot on Sunday morning. I think we should really get some of our own preachers and preach that gay is good. And we'd have a great choir.
For all of us involved in preaching the gospel, performing music, publishing Christian materials, and all the rest, there is an uncomfortable message here: Jesus is not terribly impressed with religious commercialism