Religious Attitude Quotes

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.

Is religion a private affair? Would you like to see Islam, as a moral and political ideal, meeting the same fate in the world of Islam as Christianity has already met in Europe? Is it possible to retie in Islam as an ethical ideal and to reject it as a polity in favor of national politics, in which religious attitude is not permitted to play any part? …. The proposition that religion is a private individual experience is not surprising on the lips of a European. In Europe the conception of Christianity as a monastic order, renouncing the world of matter and fixing its gaze entirely on the world or spirit. led by a logical process of thought, to the view embodied in this proposition…. The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order, which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other. Therefore, the construction of a polity on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity is simply unthinkable to a Muslim.

We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

Usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In our way the point of the angle is always toward ourselves.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

It remains to consider what attitude thoughtful men and Christian believers should take respecting them, and how they stand related to beliefs of another order.

Your attitude toward the word of God is your attitude toward Jesus (Ps 37:4).

The intellectual content of religions has always finally adapted itself to scientific and social conditions after they have become clear.... For this reason I do not think that those who are concerned about the future of a religious attitude should trouble themselves about the conflict of science with traditional doctrines.

You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.

People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.

But I do think that we approach music, in of itself, with a religious attitude.

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason.

It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the enemy of every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.