“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?”
Topic
religion
990 quotes
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“We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect. Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they are sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.”
“As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.”
“I first became interested in women and religion when I was one of the few women doing graduate work in Religious Studies at Yale University in the late 1960's.”
“There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.”
“I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.”
“There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.”
“When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.”
“The essence of America - that which really unites us - is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion - it is an idea - and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.”
“True religion... is giving and finding one's happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.”
“Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no matter how benign their intentions, present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries, as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west.”
“The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.”
“Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.”
“Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.”
“If you look at U.S. history through religious history, there is very much a motif that shows the importance religion has played in the U.S. We're a very religious country and it affects the way we look at various political issues.”
“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”
“I don't believe in organized religion - I dealt with them hand in hand, and a whole bunch of Catholic priests tried to molest me. Telling me I was gay and I should go home with them and stuff.”
“Women are oppressed in the east, in the west, in the south, in the north. Women are oppressed inside, outside home, a woman is oppressed in religion, she is oppressed outside religion.”
“A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.”
“Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.”
“Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.”
“I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed.”
“I liked the humor of it, I've always enjoyed a sense of humor in God and in religion and in spirituality.”
“Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin.”