Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.

In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also, thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed.

Now, I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion, whether they do it out of friendship and kindness towards them or no? I say, if all this be done merely to make men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer whoredom, fraud, malice and such-like enormities, which (according to the Apostle) manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predominate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people?

The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

One of Dawkins' major gripes is against religion. I am in total agreement on that one. I abhor religion.

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas.

So, is Hollywood anti-religion? Not in my opinion. But unlike, say, politicians and preachers who talk faith before going off to speak in tongues to their mistresses, Hollywood just doesn't wear its faith on its sleeve.

I feel like we need to be aware of the ways we use and misuse religious dogma: whether it takes us deeper into love and inclusion or it separates us.

... mainstream churches now spend more time preaching against apartheid and colonialism than they do against real sins like pinching secretaries and pilfering from the office coffee pool. The Southern Baptists, because they were fortunate enough to flourish in a region where the false sun of the Enlightenment never shone, succeeded in escaping this grim fate.

Unhappily, religion is used to cover or bolster up a number of bad practices. I … still see a threat of Catholic-Fascism. And officially the Irish Roman Catholic Church is opposed to progress as not good for the people …. The effect of religious opinion in this country (Protestant as well as Catholic) seems to be, a heavy trend to the Right.

It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

Adherents of almost all religions, as they move away in time from the source, are invariably known to have employed coercion either to keep people within the fold of their religion, or to convert others into their faith.

As a concerned person of faith, … I have watched with increasing alarm as Religious Right groups manipulate religion to further their intolerant political agenda.

We will not compromise with any infidel....Islam is the truth and all else is falsehood.

For his own sordid ends The pulpit he ascends

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.

In Israel, the ultra-Orthodox have formed a partisan bloc able to manipulate the political system even as it makes little effort to hide its contempt for secular democracy …. Israel is plagued by fundamentalism, but the country does not exist in a vacuum. Extremism is a disease that has infected its whole neighborhood, and the countries surrounding Israel suffer from far worse cases of it.

A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.

We seem to be the victims of religious dogma, both from the Christian Right here and, of course, in the East with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Although I am a Christian, with what religion has become - a tool for so much of the bad stuff - I just say to people that I'm a person of faith.