Religious Manipulation Quotes

When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.

Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power.

The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

Where's the church, who took the steeple, Religion's in the hands of some crazy ass people, Television preachers with bad hair and dimples, The God's honest truth is, it's not that simple

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

History suggests that the main obstacles facing Muslims in their attempts to achieve open political systems and democratic governments are 1) a deeply rooted authoritarian political culture, and 2) manipulated interpretations of the Koran.

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

With the use of religious and patriotic formulas, statesmen may sleep amidst the wreck of nations.

The Taliban has not really studied Islam…They only know jihad and fighting… they are using the name of Islam for their purposes

The devil's not fighting churches today, he's joining churches.

The worst corruption is a corrupt religion.

...religion is a tool to bind people together, to strengthen their unity, but like every tool, it can be mismanaged, even used in opposition to the way it should.

Jim Bakker came along. He said, Jessica Hahn, listen. You're a virgin. As God as my witness. He said, We need a girl that we can trust.

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.

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

Western governments have completely separated Islam from politics. They have cut off its head and given the rest to us.

This is not religion. This is obscenity. These are lies, the criminal use of religious power to misguide people.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science of church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

I don't understand a belief that there is an invisible being in the sky who watches over us all the time and keeps score and who throws you in a burning pit. I think that's very limiting, very antihuman. It's the way they devised for helping to control people because if they can make you believe in an invisible man who's going to hurt you later, they can make you believe anything!