John Dewey Quotes

A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery.

It's one thing to be religious, but it's another thing to make religion your policy.

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

Religion is an irrational construct.

Religion's war against fringe beliefs is not a contest of rational and irrational. It is a contest between different fantasy systems, one having more political and financial clout than the others and, therefore, able to advertise itself into respectability.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

Religious scholars, marginalized by modernization, seek to assert their own relevance by insisting on orthodoxy.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

I grew up very religious, and I don't have a great relationship with religion.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.

Religion may become a fashion as well as anything else; and, when it does become so, it has as little to do, in those who thus hold it, with the heart and the character as any other fashion.

I took religion much too seriously, however, and its overall effect was depressing. I would have really liked to discard it, but somehow I couldn't.

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

The story of the decadence of the cathedral as a moral power, a spiritual energizer in civilization, is the sad but inevitable story of dogmatism. It is the story of the struggle of free thought with bigotry, religion making common cause with the wrong side.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

I'm fascinated by religion, but I'm not particularly religious.

In the forefront of science, there is not much difference between religion and science. People harbor beliefs. That's what happens when people believe something religiously.

I think religion is a bunch of hooey, and I think that the holidays are an opportunity for people to get stressed out, getting their rush to shop. It's so conformist.

But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.

Religion is a strange, wonderful thing. More crimes have been committed in the name of righteousness than any other notion.

'Boxers' was more time consuming simply because it was longer, but 'Saints' was definitely harder. I think it's just hard to talk about faith in general.