Various Thoughts on Religion

"One's religion is whatever he is most interested in."
--J.M. Barrie, The Twelve Pound Look (1910)

"The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being."
--Samuel Butler, "Elementary Morality" (1912)

"Persecution, religious pride, the love of contradiction, are the food of what the world commonly calls religion."
--Michel Guillaume De Crevecoeur, Letters from and American Farmer (1782)

"The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research."
--Albert Einstein, quoted in his obituary, April 19, 1955

"No man's religion ever survived his morals."
--English Proverb

The founders of the great world religions, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu, Mohammed, all seem to have striven for a worldwide brotherhood of man; but none of them could develop institutions which would include the enemy, the unbeliever."
--Geoffrey Gorer, The New York Times Magazine, 11/27/66

"The garb of religion is the best cloak for power."
--William Hazlitt, "On the Clerical Character" (1819)

"I count religion but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance."
--Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)

"Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
--Karl Marx, Introduction to "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" (1884)

"Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion."
--Napoleon I, Maxims (1804-15)