78 Inspiring Religion Quotes

In a world filled with constant change and challenges, many of us seek solace and inspiration in the timeless wisdom of religion. Whether drawing from sacred texts, the teachings of spiritual leaders, or the reflections of great thinkers, religious quotes offer profound insights into the human experience. They uplift our spirits, guide our actions, and foster a deeper understanding of our purpose. In this collection, we present you with a handpicked selection of 78 inspiring religion quotes, each chosen for its ability to resonate across different faiths and beliefs. As you explore these words of wisdom, may you find comfort, enlightenment, and a renewed sense of hope, no matter where your spiritual journey takes you.

1. “It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.” - Mahatma Gandhi

2. “You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense.” - Rick Warren

3. “Ninguna cosa es más propia a Dios que el amor, ni al amor hay cosa más natural que volver al que ama en las condiciones e ingenio del que es amado.” - Fray Luis de León

4. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything is tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?" Joseph Knect said to his Music Master "there is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend rather, you should long for perfection in yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived not taught” - Hermann Hesse

5. “Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?” - Friedrich Nietzsche

6. “Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in our world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, and the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in the republic, the other is represented by despotism.The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of man. Of course we endeavor to restrain the vicious, and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of our religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, humanity, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of divine grace.” - Calvin Coolidge

7. “I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.” - Karen Armstrong

8. “Your way of life is sinful and wrong," he said fiercely.Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear.” - P.C. Cast

9. “A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.” - Abraham Joshua Heschel

10. “A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious.” - David Brazier

11. “Human desire is the criterion of all truth and all good. Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling. There is really nothing to fear. The motive of fear in religion is base...” - D. H. Lawrence

12. “Some folks are happier not being saved.” - Lisa Kleypas

13. “Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality. — Mother Jones November/December 1997.” - Huston Smith

14. “The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' "Melissa," it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for yourself. I'd like to be optimistic, and I try to take care of my health, but none of my grandparents even made it past 76, three killed by cancer, one by Parkinson's disease. If I live no longer than any of them did, I have at most thirty years left, which puts me around sixty percent of the way through my time. I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It has been decades since I stopped believing-a belief that was never more than fitful and self-serving to begin with-in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I'm not totally certain where I stand on the whole "soul" question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, I'm inclined to disbelieve in its existence. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It's just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes over the side of my basket.” - Michael Chabon

15. “See? This is why I'm not religious. I couldn't possibly keep my mouth shut long enough to get along with everyone else.” - Jim Butcher

16. “No matter how an individual views Satan, whether they believe that he is a real character or that he is just the product of literary scholars and imaginations, no one can deny that each one of us has an aspect of the devil within us. By studying the character and nature of Satan, we learn about ourselves; and the more we know about ourselves, the better we can fight our own personal demons—metaphorical or otherwise—in order to create a better tomorrow” - Nwaocha Ogechukwu

17. “If the heart be chiefly and directly fixed on God, and the soul engaged to glorify him, some degree of religious affection will be the effect and attendant of it. But to seek after affection directly and chiefly; to have the heart principally set upon that; is to place it in the room of God and his glory. If it be sought, that others may take notice of it, and admire us for our spirituality and forwardness in religion, it is then damnable pride; if for the sake of feeling the pleasure of being affected, it is then idolatry and self-gratification.” - Jonathan Edwards

18. “Christ represents originally: 1) men before God; 2) God for men; 3) men to man.Similarly, money represents originally, in accordance with the idea of money: 1) private property for private property; 2) society for private property; 3) private property for society.But Christ is alienated God and alienated man. God has value only insofar as he represents Christ, and man has value only insofar as he represents Christ. It is the same with money.” - Karl Marx

19. “It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.” - Sam Harris

20. “Peace, sweet peace finally comes to men when they humbly yield to the gentle pressure of the Spirit.” - Spencer W. Kimball

21. “وفي القرآن الكريم يقول تعالى للسيد المسيح :"أأنت قلت للناس اتخذوني وأمي إلهين"يرد المسيح:"إن كنت قلته فقد علمته "والله تعالى يعلم كل شي..ماقال المسيح ومالم يقل ..ولكن الله يعلمنا أدب الحوار..وأدب المناقشة ..أدب أن نسأل وأن ننتظر الإجابة” - أنيس منصور

22. “The divine is always abominable."Houses Under The Sea” - Caitlín R. Kiernan

23. “What if we changed the story that has been peddled to us over thousands of years by those religions that want to control us, that this life is merely a stepping stone to something better or something worse, and that we can only achieve the better by passing through the doors of their institutions and following their rules? What if we trash this arcane story which has caused so much suffering and hostility, and accept that we have already arrived in heaven and that there is nothing more gorgeous than here and now?” - Danny Scheinmann

24. “I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.” - Yann Martel

25. “The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

26. “Guys like him, the ones who grip the Bible so tight they leave fingernail grooves, they're the ones who are the most scared of their dark side. Always going too far the other way, fighting for the Lord, often just because it gives them an excuse to fight. ” - David Wong

27. “From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” - Salman Rushdie

28. “Total Enlightenment is 'Vision without Purpose'.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

29. “I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” - General William Booth

30. “Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.” - David Mitchell

31. “My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, firstly because she did not want me to learn how to handle weapons, but also because the meetings that were then held on Sunday mornings (before the Fascist Saturday was instituted) consisted mostly of a Mass in the scouts' chapel. When I had to be enrolled as part of my school duties, she asked that I be excused from the Mass; this was impossible for disciplinary reasons, but my mother saw to it that the chaplain and the commander were aware that I was not a Catholic and that I should not be asked to perform any external acts of devotion in church. In short, I often found myself in situations different from others, looked on as if I were some strange animal. I do not think this harmed me: one gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority. But above all I grew up tolerant of others' opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority's beliefs. And at the same time I have remained totally devoid of that taste for anticlericalism which is so common in those who are educated surrounded by religion. I have insisted on setting down these memories because I see that many non-believing friends let their children have a religious education 'so as not to give them complexes', 'so that they don't feel different from the others.' I believe that this behavior displays a lack of courage which is totally damaging pedagogically. Why should a young child not begin to understand that you can face a small amount of discomfort in order to stay faithful to an idea? And in any case, who said that young people should not have complexes? Complexes arise through a natural attrition with the reality that surrounds us, and when you have complexes you try to overcome them. Life is in fact nothing but this triumphing over one's own complexes, without which the formation of a character and personality does not happen.” - Italo Calvino

32. “The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.” - Charles Darwin

33. “Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!” - Robert G. Ingersoll

34. “Más importante que empezar bien nuestro caminar con Dios es terminar bien la obra.” - Victor Manuel Rivera

35. “Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that's wrong . . . . The answer to bad religion is better religion--prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology.” - Jim Wallis

36. “I am accountable.I am correctable.I am transformable.Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God. By the love of God.By the word of God.Completely supplied in Christ Jesus.Unto all good works.” - Carlton T. Brown

37. “Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?” - Christopher Hitchens

38. “Far better it is for you to say: "I am a sinner," than to say: "I have no need of religion." The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God.” - Fulton J. Sheen

39. “Let us keep in mind that we do not have to go to the scriptures inorder to approach God. We do not have to find the right scripture inorder to talk to God".” - Thurman L Faison

40. “Those who are without compassion cannot see what is seen with the eyes of compassion.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

41. “The only thing that is still free in this world is religion, which is why a lot of people "find it.” - Jimmy Buffett

42. “Most world religions denounced war as a barbaric waste of human life. We treasured the teachings of these religions so dearly that we frequently had to wage war in order to impose them on other people.” - Jon Stewart

43. “God rewards those who seek Him. Not those who seek doctrine of religion or systems or creeds. Many settle for these lesser passions, but the reward goes to those who settle for nothing less than Jesus himself. And what is the reward? What awaits those who seek Jesus? Nothing short of the heart of Jesus.” - Max Lucado

44. “النفس ذواقة تواقة, فإذا ذاقت تاقت, ولهذا إذا ذاق العبد طعم حلاوة الإيمان وخالطت بشاشته قلبه رسخ فيه حبه, ولم يؤثر عليه شيئا أبدا ” - ابن قيم الجوزية

45. “But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud.” - Kurt Vonnegut

46. “Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are not hatreds in the true sense. If I criticise Islamic, Orthodox Jewish or Catholic attitudes towards women, for instance, and I'm accused of being a bigot, I shrug and say it is not bigoted to oppose bigotry.” - Nick Cohen

47. “Disgusted by the abuses to which it led, humanity repressed Christianity by which it had so long been dominated. Repressed, but not eliminated. Herein lies, I believe, the essence of the tragedy of modern times. The modern man lives as if Christianity were a negligible hypothesis with no relation to the concrete realities of the world and society. And yet at the bottom of his heart this man remains impregnated with Christianity, so that he lives in a state of perpetual ambivalence with regard to it.” - Paul Tournier

48. “Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” - Umberto Eco

49. “What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.” - Stanisław Lem

50. “A man and woman in search of something are always blown apart, but it's the same wind that blows them.” - Frank O'Connor

51. “... There is a publication classification in an upper corner. It reads Religion. I'm immediately skeptical <...> because I've always group books such as this in a category with crap like Astrology, Aromatherapy, Crystalology, Pyramid Power, Psychic Healing and Feng Shui <...> that anyone would actually believe that these things could solve their problems, really solve them, instead of just making them forget about them for a while, is asinine to me...” - james frey

52. “God does not bring two people together for the benefit of just one” - Rosemary West

53. “فرق شاسع بين مفهوم العبادة كما نزل من عند الله، و علمه رسول الله -صلى الله عليه و سلم- و وعاه الجيل الأول و مارسه، و بين المفهوم الشائه الهزيل الضامر الذي فهمته الأجيال المتأخرة .. مارسته أم لم تمارسه! المفهوم الأول هو الذي أخرج "خير أمة أخرجت للناس" و المفهوم الأخير هو الذي أخرج "غثاء السيل".. و لا بد من تصحيح المفاهيم ..(إِنَّ اللَّـهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ )، ( قُل لَّا يَسْتَوِي الْخَبِيثُ وَالطَّيِّبُ وَلَوْ أَعْجَبَكَ كَثْرَةُ الْخَبِيثِ ).. إن المسألة ليست ثانويه .. و لا هي مسألة هينة يكفي لحلها شيء من الوعظ والإرشاد.. إنها مسألة تحتاج إلى بناء من جديد ..” - محمد قطب

54. “It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.” - Francine Rivers

55. “Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.” - Robert Anton Wilson

56. “Радость. Долг каждого человека - взращивать свою внутреннюю радость. Но многие религии забыли это правило. Большинство храмов темны и холодны. Литургическая музыка помпезна и грустна. Священники одеваются в черное. Ритуалы прославляют пытки мучеников и соперничают в изображении жестокостей. Как если бы мучения, которые претерпели их пророки, были свидетельствами их истинности.Не является ли радость жизни лучшим способом отблагодарить Бога за его существование, если он существует? А если Бог существует, почему он должен быть мрачным существом?” - Bernard Werber

57. “Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.” - Carl Sagan

58. “وتجديد الإسلام ليس نقل الدين من مكانه إلى حيث يهوى الناس، بل نقل الناس من نطاق أهوائهم إلى حيث يرضى الله” - محمد الغزالي

59. “If you do not have the possibility of abandoning your religion, you do not enjoy the possibility of freely embracing it, either.” - Paul Berman

60. “Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice.” - Dan Simmons

61. “I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is. ... When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter too. I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if it is true for me.” - Henrik Ibsen

62. “I felt an overwhelming gratitude in my life right now and wanted a chance to acknowledge it. I felt that any thanks given to any god all went to the same place, anyway, no matter what religion you were centered in.” - Cate Tiernan

63. “Then there was Buddha meddling in, telling all of the Hindu, Hebrew, Christian and Islamic gods and demons that they were nothing more than unenlightened fear induced figments of nirvana-starved mortals.” - Andrew James Pritchard

64. “Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?” - Mark Twain

65. “What sets science and the law apart from religion is that nothing is expected to be taken on faith. We're encouraged to ask whether the evidence actually supports what we're being told - or what we grew up believing - and we're allowed to ask whether we're hearing all the evidence or just some small prejudicial part of it. If our beliefs aren't supported by the evidence, then we're encouraged to alter our beliefs.” - Gary Taubes

66. “Church, in the New Testament sense of the word, is not a meeting we attend, but a group of which we are a part, and a group we serve within.” - Keri Wyatt Kent

67. “Robe Moj, ti zelis jedno, Ja drugo, a uvijek se desava onako kako Ja hocu. Pa ako se prepustis onome sto Ja hocu, pruzicu ti i ono sto ti hoces. A ako se ne pokoris... Mojoj odredbi, namucit ces se sa onim sto hoces, a ipak ce biti onako kako Ja hocu!” - Hadis

68. “Oenone had found the chapel by accident, and was not certain what kept drawing her back to it. She was not a Christian. Few people were anymore, except in Africa, and on certain islands of the outermost west. All she knew of Christians was that they worhsipped a god nailed to a cross, and what on earth was the use of a god who went around letting himself get nailed to things?” - Philip Reeve

69. “The image of God is your final obstruction to a religious experience.” - Joseph Campbell

70. “In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views--I just didn't think about religion.” - Will Schwalbe

71. “Cut me off from the Church? They can't do that! I repent do damn fast!” - J. Golden Kimball

72. “Science will always be the source of authority for those who wish to remove God from their thinking.” - Curtis A. Chamberlain

73. “Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [...] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. [...] But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at that moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.” - Alan Lightman

74. “...Both Elizabeth [Smart] and Ruby [Jessop] were fourteen when they were kidnapped, raped and "kept captive by polygamous fanatics." The main difference in the girls' respective ordeals...is that "Elizabeth was brainwashed for nine months," while Ruby had been brainwashed by polygamist fanatics "since birth." Despite the similarity of their plights, Elizabeth's abusers were jailed and charged with sexual assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping, while Ruby... "was returned to her abusers, no real investigation was done, no charges brought against anyone" involved.” - Jon Krakauer

75. “The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

76. “Religion is a personal matter between God and man, and that force plays no role in it” - Mirza Masroor Ahmad

77. “تدرك السياسة, وخصوصاً حين تكون قامعة مستبدة، أن العقل المنفتح غير المقيد هو أخطر ما يتهددها؛ وذلك من حيث يؤشر علي أن نقيضها من الحكم الرشيد هو المؤدي- وليس سواه- إلي تحقيق صالح المجموع، ومن هنا ما تسعي إليه، علي الدوام، من إزاحته وإبعاده.وإذ تدرك استحالة إنجاز هذا الإنجاز بما تمتلك من وسائل الترويع والبطش، فإنها تتوسل بالدين والشرع لتضعهما في مواجهة معه، وللغرابة، فإن ذلك لا ينتهي إلي إسكات صوت العقل فحسب، بل إلي تهديد منظومتي الدين والشرع علي نحو كامل.” - علي مبروك

78. “¿Has pensado alguna vez en la muerte?Sí. A veces. ¿Y tú?Sí. A veces. ¿Crees que existe un cielo?Sí. ¿Tú no?No lo sé. Quizá sí. ¿Crees que puedes creer en el cielo si no crees en el infierno?Creo que puedes creer lo que quieras.” - Cormac McCarthy