Pearl S. Buck Quotes

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

Nearly every tribe and nearly every human being has gods. Belief in gods is all over the place. It's universal. It squeaks and squoozes from every pore of humanity.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

Fear created the first gods in the world.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. IF he worship not the true God, he will have his idols.

I think the world would be much poorer without religion, speaking generally.

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

There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.

Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that's got true religion, several of them.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Religion is one dimension of culture, a transcendent element of it.

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.

Fear first made gods in the world.

Religion is such a path with people.

Human beings are fascinating with religion and stories about not dying. Or dying and being brought back to life. I think it's just part of our make up.

Hardly can it be judged whether it be better for mankind to believe that the gods have regard of us, or that they have none, considering that some men have no respect and reverence for the gods, and others so much that their superstition is a shame to them.

There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their lives, who didn't know... why the sun always rose over the mountains.

Humanity is the child of religion.

Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.

Gods are what people worship. Men are what die.

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.