Any spirit that permits compromise with the world is a false spirit. Any religious movement that imitates the world in any of its manifestations is false to the cross of Christ and on the side of the devil.
I always feel as if I stood naked for the fire of Almighty God to go through me--and it's rather an awful feeling. One has to be so terribly religious to be an artist.
The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.
They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the (religious) traditions or interpreted them!
We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.
The world being unworthy to receive the Son of God directly from the hands of the Father, he gave his Son to Mary for the world to receive him from her.
I think you can judge from somebody's actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there's a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.
For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.
Some people automatically associate morality and altruism with a religious vision of the world. But I believe it is a mistake to think that morality is an attribute only of religion. We can imagine two types of spirituality: one tied to religion, while the other arises spontaneously in the human heart as an expression of love for our neighbors and a desire to do them good.
We all learn in school that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government must check and balance each other. But other non state institutions must participate in this important system of checks and balances as well. These checking institutions include the academy, the media, religious institutions and NGOs.
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the
other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both.
Relying, as I do, upon the Almighty Power, and encouraged as I am by these resolutions which you have just read, with the support which I receive from Christian men, I shall not hesitate to use all the means at my control to secure the termination of this rebellion, and will hope for success.
The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.
Government...may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another... The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality.