Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

I think religion is a gateway for spiritual awakening.

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

I believe religion is man-made.

As an undergraduate, I took a theology course titled Religion as Writing. If writing can be considered a form of faith, then inevitably doubt has to accompany it.

Religion is like magic. It is all about tricks.

Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.

In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.

Religion is a complex and often contradictory force in our world. It fosters hope and comfort but also doubt and guilt. It creates both community and exclusion. It brings societies together around shared belief and tears them apart through war. However, what unites the faithful, whatever their religion, is the unshakeable force of generosity.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

The truth of the matter is that when you write about religion like I do, you're writing about something that people take very seriously.

Religion can be both good and bad - it is spirituality that counts.

Well, religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. Stories about God, stories about love. Stories about good spirits and evil spirits.

I believe all religions are becoming obsolete, clinging to ancient concepts.

Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune.

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

Religion is a disease, but a noble disease.

Revealed religion had no weight with me.

Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the balance sheet. The doers are selling us potted plants and pizzas while the thinkers are a little bit unworldly. Religions both think and do.

I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, raid, and learn from.

If you take a cold, blunt view of most religions, and you sort of say, 'Well, here's the basis for it,' most of them sound crazy. It's the belief that makes them real. I was interested in that question: When does a belief become a myth? When does something you believe in become just a story?

The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world ofsuperstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.