49 Inspiring Religion Quotes

In a world where daily life often pulls us in multiple directions, it's essential to find moments of reflection and inspiration to ground ourselves. Religion, transcending centuries and cultures, offers profound wisdom and guidance. The words of spiritual leaders, philosophers, and sacred texts provide a beacon of hope and clarity. Whether you seek solace, motivation, or a deeper understanding, the power of these religious quotes can illuminate your path and nourish your soul. Join us as we explore a curated collection of 49 inspiring religion quotes that resonate across time and tradition, each with the potential to inspire contemplation and positive change.

1. “Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively.” - Jon Stewart

2. “How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!” - Benjamin Franklin

3. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.” - Alice Walker

4. “God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.” - Barbara Kingsolver

5. “Do not use your energy except for a cause more noble than yourself. Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your Creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed. Anyone who uses his energy for the sake of the vanities of the world is like someone who exchanges gemstones for gravel. There is no nobility in anyone who lacks faith. The wise man knows that the only fitting price for his soul is a place in Paradise...” - Ibn Hazm

6. “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” - Thomas Paine

7. “I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.” - Susan B. Anthony

8. “[I]m Hain des Tempels und im Schatten der Zitadelle habe ich die Freiesten unter euch ihre Freiheit als Joch und Handschellen tragen sehen.” - Khalil Gibran

9. “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” - Anonymous

10. “(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them--the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind--should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.” - Jerome K. Jerome

11. “لو كان للأديان بصمة لكان العدل بصمة الإسلام” - جمال البنا

12. “He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels.” - Henri Michaux

13. “Religion is a salve for confusion and misdirection.” - Robert F. Kennedy

14. “Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.” - C.S. Lewis

15. “If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.” - John Patrick Shanley

16. “Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,' cried the girl. 'Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be God's own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?” - Charles Dickens

17. “At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity?Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is 'only a theory'? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?).[. . . And Why I'm Most Certainly Not! -- The Wall Street Journal, Commentary Column. May 5, 2005]” - Christopher Hitchens

18. “I have church on Sunday.”“Of course you do.”“You’re welcome to come along.”“Thanks, but I’m allergic to incense.”“That’s a shame.”“It’s the bane of my existence.”- Beth and Jake” - Alexandra Adornetto

19. “But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.” - Barbara Ehrenreich

20. “They all know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts," he says, "The weather, which, as they're farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat - this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we're planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in life but we usually do it while we're talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It's the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed.” - Marlena De Blasi

21. “Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people -- in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for -- although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors.” - Ernst Bloch

22. “Religion isn't best understood primarily as a collection of beliefs held by backward people with fear and trembling for most of human history (religion as brainwash). It is rather, among other things, a scriptorium of beleaguered witness, a record of collated information, both fragmentary and sometimes systematic, with which we may feel compelled to reckon as it somehow, across history, reckons with us, an inheritance, if you like, of difficult wisdom.” - David Dark

23. “No man [...] can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself.” - John Milton

24. “Conflict is inevitable but combat is optional.” - Max Lucado

25. “The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.” - James Martineau

26. “I don't believe in school prayer. I think it's total nonsense...who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or what? It just causes all sorts of problems. And what are the kids praying about anyway? Does it really matter, does praying in school...what are you doing it for? The whole thing just opens up all sorts of elements of discussion. I think it's crazy.” - Charles M. Schulz

27. “Not matter what your sacred or religious book is, it's not how well you know the book, it's how well you're in alignment with the author.” - Steve Maraboli

28. “One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.” - Iain Banks

29. “May you live in such a way that your death is just the beginning of your life.” - Max Lucado

30. “I can't be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.” - Jeanette Winterson

31. “Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.” - Frank Herbert

32. “The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.” - Robert Farrar Capon

33. “A wise man once told me- he’s a muslim by the way- that he has more in common with a jew than he does a fanatic of his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or a Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a ration, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion” - Gregory David Roberts

34. “Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. "Just like that. All that exercise for nothing." Diana-worship was the nearest thing Mum had to a religion.” - Kate Atkinson

35. “In this respect the differences between the USA and the USSR are those of evangelical dinosaurs competing for domination on one small planet: the first deifies Jesus Christ, the other Karl Marx. Neither has much practical interest in what those two sincere and hard-working fellows actually preached.” - Edward Abbey

36. “To be a human being is to be a child of God” - M. Bartolo-Abela

37. “For though we know quite well that God is present in all that we do, our nature is such that it makes us lose sight of the fact; but when this favour is granted it can no longer do so, for the Lord, who is near at hand, awakens it. And even the favours aforementioned occur much more commonly, as the soul experiences a vivid and almost constant love for Him whom it sees or knows to be at its side.” - Teresa of Avila

38. “Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.” - Barbara Tuchman

39. “Intinya, bagimana sembahyang itu bisa mendorong seluruh hatimu untuk menolong orang lain. Itulah inti pergi ke masjid, gereja, wihara, kuil, dan sebagainya.” - Sujiwo Tejo

40. “Destiny waits in the hand of god, shaping the still unshapen..” - T.S. Eliot

41. “We keep hoping in God while reality keeps knocking at our door.” - Shina Charles Memud

42. “To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.” - Gerard Manley Hopkins

43. “Agama dijadikan media provokasi termurah dan terefektif sepanjang masa, apalagi buat orang kayak gue yang nggak ngerti-ngerti banget agama.” - Sammaria

44. “Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run, is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain. The recent debunking of beliefs that invite or tolerate violence call to mind Voltaire's quip that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Steven Pinker

45. “إنتهاء عصر الوحي هو إبتداء عصر العقل” - محمد الغزالي

46. “Over and over these organizations tell America that family, above all, is what Christianity is about. Devotion to one's family is, indeed, a wonderful thing. Yet it is hardly something to brag about. For all except the most pathologically self-absorbed, love for one's parents, spouse, and children comes naturally. Jesus did not make it his business to affirm these ties; he didn't have to. Jews feel them, Buddhists feel them, Confucians and Zoroastrians and atheists feel them. Christianity is not about reinforcing such natural bonds and instinctive sentiments. Rather, Christianity is about challenging them and helping us to see all of humankind as our family. It seems clear that if Jesus had wanted to affirm the "traditional family" in the way that Pat Robertson claims, he would not have lived the way he did.” - Bruce Bawer

47. “All of us, all human beings, are basically inclined or disposes toward what we perceive to be good. Whatever we do, we do because we think it will be of some benefit. At the same time, we all appreciate the kindness of others. We are all, by nature, oriented toward the basic human values of love and compassion. We all prefer the love of others to their hatred. We all prefer others' generosity to their meanness. And who among us does not prefer tolerance, respect, and forgiveness of out failings to bigotry, disrespect, and resentment?” - Dalai Lama XIV

48. “In religion our only hope is to live a life good enough to require God to bless us, so every instance of sin and repentance is therefore traumatic, unnatural and threatening. Only under great duress do religious people admit they have sinned, because their only hope is their moral goodness. In the gospel the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ makes it easier to admit that we are flawed, because we know we won't be cast off if we confess the true depths of our sinfulness. Our hope is in Christ's righteousness, not our own, so it is not as traumatic to admit our weaknesses and lapses.” - Timothy Keller

49. “إذا كان الوضع الذي ساد في عالم الإسلام لترتيب العلاقة بين العقل والنقل; وأعني بالكيفية التي ظل معها العقل تابعا لسلطة النقل علي نحو شبه كامل, هو ما يؤسس لهذا التصور الغالب عن قصور العقل واحتياجه, فإن أصل هذا الوضع لا يرتد- علي عكس ما يتبادر سريعا للذهن- إلي الإسلام نفسه, بل إنه يجد ما يؤسسه كاملا في قلب الثقافة السابقة عليه, والتي يبدو- وللمفارقة- أن الإسلام قد قصد إلي زحزحة وإزاحة نظامها الكلي, علي الرغم من إدماجه لبعض عناصرها الجزئية في صميم بنائه. فإنه إذا كان التحليل يكشف عن أن من قاموا علي صياغة التيار الغالب في ثقافة الإسلام( الذين يتناسلون في سلالة ممتدة من علماء الأصول الكبار من مثل الشافعي وابن حنبل والأشعري والباقلاني والجويني والغزالي وابن تيمية وغيرهم) قد كرسوا تبعية- تتفاوت حدودها- من العقل للنقل, فإنه يبدو- وللغرابة- أن الترتيب الذي كرسه هؤلاء المؤسسون الكبار للعلاقة بين العقل والنقل, يمثل انحرافا عن ترتيب العلاقة بينهما الذي ينبني عليه فعل الوحي ذاته; وهو الفعل المؤسس للإسلام كدين.” - علي مبروك