The following inspirational quotes are about religion and true spirituality and reflect my beliefs that the religious debate is a sham. All sacred texts convey the same message, tweaked for regional, cultural and historical differences. The essence is that we are all spiritual beings on a physical journey and that we are equal partners in the creative process of the Universe. The key is to expand consciousness, or become God.
You might also be interested in A Closer Look at the Origins of Religion.
- “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.” -- Albert Einstein
- “If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.” -- deism.com
- “Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us. We cannot stand aside and let God do it.” -- deism.com
- “My religion is kindness.” -- The Dalai Lama
- “God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.” -- Meister Eckhart
- “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” -- H.L. Mencken
- “Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.” -- Mignon McLaughlin
- “When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.” -- Peter O' Tool
- “In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.” -- Mark Twain
- “I put it to you that both you and I are atheists. It is just that I believe in one fewer gods than you. When you finally come to understand why you don’t believe in all those other gods then you will understand why I don’t believe in yours.” -- Anon
- “Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?” -- Arthur C. Clarke
- “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” -- Albert Einstein
- “Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche
- “"I am" is the name of God.
God is none other than the Self.” -- Ramana Maharshi - “If thou knowest thine own self, thou knowest God.” -- Ibn-Al-Arabi
- “All religions contain, like an apple, the same common core beliefs.” -- Joseph P. Martino
- “Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder.” -- Homer Simpson
- “I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.” -- Albert Einstein
- “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” -- Albert Einstein
- “At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.” -- Aldous Huxley
- “Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication.” -- Algernon Black
- “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” -- Anais Nin
- “An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?"” -- Annie Dillard
- “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” -- Benjamin Franklin
- “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.” -- Bill Gates
- “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” -- Blaise Pascal
- “Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.” -- Forrest Church
- “The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.” -- Friedrich Schleiermacher
- “I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” -- Galileo Galilei
- “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” -- George Bernard Shaw
- “The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.” -- H.L. Mencken
- “The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.” -- Helen Keller
- “But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.” -- Herbert Butterfield
- “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” -- James Baldwin
- “Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this?” -- Leo Tolstoy
- “Our religious institutions have far too often become handmaidens of the status quo, while the genuine religious experience is anything but that. True religion is by nature disruptive of what has been, giving birth to the eternally new.” -- Marianne Williamson
- “Religion can be defined as a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate problems of human life.” -- Milton Yinger
- “Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that -- it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.” -- Noam Chomsky
- “Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.” -- Rebecca West
- “The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” -- Richard Francis Burton
- “One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.” -- Robert Heinlein
- “Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.” -- Sigmund Freud
- “I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.” -- Susan B. Anthony
- “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” -- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
- “Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life.” -- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
- “Difference of opinion is helpful in religion.” -- Thomas Jefferson
- “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” -- Thomas Jefferson
- “Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who thinks differently from him.” -- Walter Savage Landor
- “Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretences to both.” -- William Hazlitt
- “But theological change happens though selective quoting. Every religious person does it: You quote those verses that resonate with your own religious insights and ignore or reinterpret those that undermine your certainties. Selective quoting isn't just legitimate, but essential: Religions evolve through shifts in selective quoting.” -- Yossie Klein Halevi
If you've enjoyed what you've read so far, you'll certainly enjoy my big-picture thinking in the booklet The 2012 Manifesto. You can read more about it here or just click on the big-ass Download button below and I'll take you straight to the download page.
I am a global roamer, soul-searcher, contrarian who has challenged the norm since 1975. My goal is to connect with other world-changers to help make sense of life in an increasingly senseless world. 
. Thanks!
