A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises.
Johannes Tauler

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

Funny you mention my dinner parties when I have just suggested that inviting close friends over to share a meal with candlelight and wine at your table could be a form of religious experience for some people. To me it's a form of sacrament.
Sally Quinn

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

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

Those people who want to express their religious beliefs on public property should enjoy the same rights that we provide to those protesting the war in Iraq.
Ernest Istook

Indeed, one of the most successful and influential religious organizations in history, the Society of Jesus, was consciously modeled along military lines by its founder, Ignatius Loyola.
Robert Shea

We're not at a point in time to be taking chances with children and young people in the church. The Holy Father himself said... there is no room in the priesthood or religious life for someone who has abused a child. I think he's right.
Roger Mahony

So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching.
Phillip E. Johnson

The artist himself may not think he is religious, but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion.
Emily Carr

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.
Maggie Gallagher

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.
Polly Toynbee

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.
Pete Seeger