But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches.
William Robertson Smith

If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.
Mary Douglas

To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.
Chaim Potok

It was seldom that I attended any religious meetings, as my parents had not much faith in and were never so unfortunate as to unite themselves with any of the religious sects.
Orson Pratt

Every religious pioneer, including Jesus Christ, was persecuted by his contemporaries. But once people understand me, their turn can be dramatic like Saint Paul's.
Sun Myung Moon

I took the role because it's rare to read a script that makes me laugh and cry, and it spoke to my own religious feelings, as well as giving me a chance to draw on my experience as a parent. Accepting it was a no-brainer.
Stephen Collins

I don't care if you are religious or not and I think the message is that at the end of the day, everybody has to mature and everybody has to heal and mend their own injuries, emotional injuries, on their own pace.
Boris Kodjoe

One of my good friends is Christian, goes to church every Sunday, very religious. I'm fine with that and I will never judge her.
Amber Tamblyn

Unless one is a religious fundamentalist and believes that man was created in the image and likeness of God, it is foolish to believe that human beings are exempt from biological classification and the laws of evolution that apply to all other life forms.
J. Philippe Rushton

You can mostly forget ethnic or religious differences. The competition for a bigger share of the oil proceeds is behind much of the fighting.
Ed Harris

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.
Chaim Potok

Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.
John Desmond Bernal

The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment.
Muhammed Iqbal

As for the Pope, I am too old to be frightened by his shadow, and am quite sure his shadow or Substance will do less harm to the liberties of my country than will a party, who seek to acquire political power by exciting religious bigotry in the minds of their duped followers.
Ezra Cornell

On September 11, the murders of World Trade Center employees and visitors took the lives of numerous nationalities, ethnic groups and religious followers.
Cliff Stearns

Israel of the coastal plain, where eight out of ten Israeli Jews live far removed from the occupied territories, from the fiery Jerusalem, from the religious and nationalistic conflicts, is unknown to the outside world, almost unknown to itself.
Amos Oz

I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely. But I don't believe in the separation of public life from our values, our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.
Jim Wallis

Our religious belief usurps the place of our sensations, our imaginations of our judgment. We no longer look to actions, trace their consequences, and then deduce the rule; we first make the rule, and then, right or wrong, force the action to square with it.
Francis Wright

We have a need to be religious, we need to worship, we need to build totems and shrines and icons, but nobody's sure in honor of what.
Robyn Hitchcock

A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
Joseph Ratzinger