#lit

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#christianity #come #contact #into #morality

I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas. ↗

— Johnny Cash

#hypocrisy #individuality #religion #status-quo #religion

What has he found who has lost God? And what has he lost who has found God? ↗

— Ibn 'Ata' Allah Al-Iskandari

#religion #spirituality #sufism #religion

Nothing optional—from homosexuality to adultery—is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#closeted #homosexuality #hypocrisy #prohibition #religion

I have learned that one should say "Peace!" to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage. ↗

— Tariq Ramadan

#politics #islam

One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#organized-religion #religion #religion

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. ↗

— James Madison

#organized-religion #politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#organized-religion #philosophy #politics #religion #religion

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. ↗

— Mark Twain

#politics #religion #religion

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#religion #religion