Religion Quotes

"What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves."

"Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage."

"Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem."

"I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions."

"Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept."

"Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?"

"Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion."

"The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith."

"Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity."

"When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too."

"After all, enforced national bilingualism in this country isn't mere policy. It has attained the status of a religion. It's a dogma which one is supposed to accept without question."

"As a religion, bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness, produced no unity, and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions."

"In 1989 when I switched from Democrat to Republican, with God as my witness, not one thing changed about what I believed about one man and one woman in a marriage or about diversity of color. That's a good thing."

"But like a born actor who only really wants to direct, Gingrich has always been unsatisfied with what he's brilliant at. He can't still his hunger to deliver grand pronouncements on life, liberalism, conservatism, religion and whatever else swims into his consciousness."

"Faith Hill is a big role model."

"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."

"God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."

"I don't have to have faith, I have experience."

"It's a struggle for every young Black man. You know how it is, only God can judge us."

"In the early days I had a very black-and-white view of everything. I think that's kind of natural for anyone who's just embraced Islam - or any religion - as a convert. It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I'd been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood."