Religion

It will not be easy, but I feel certain that biblical studies will revive again to take an important part in the rebirth of Christianity without which the world is doomed.
~ William Foxwell (W.F.) Albright, Letter to Professor Warren Joseph Moulton (27 August 1945)

Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny.
~ Peter William (P.W.) Atkins, Essay in Oxford University Press (1995). Nature's Imagination: The Limitless Power of Science

The modern state views religion as an anomaly; it is at least a nuisance and at worst a threat.
~ William Bentley Ball, Crisis Books (1995). Mere Creatures of the State? Education, Religion, and the Court

Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.
~ William Barclay, In the Hands of God

We may not understand how the spirit works; but the effect of the spirit on the lives of men is there for all to see; and the only unanswerable argument for Christianity is a Christian life. No man can disregard a religion and a faith and a power which is able to make bad men good. . . .
~ William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 1 (1975).

The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested center and ruler of man's life, and that the church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of his being.
~ William E. Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958).

Religion is equally the basis of private virtue, and public faith; of the happiness of the individual and the prosperity of the nation.
~ William Barrow, An Essay on Education, Volume 1 (1802). Chapter I: On the Importance and Necessity of a Right Education

In the battle for preserving sound social and moral norms, many religious institutions can no longer be counted as allies.
~ William John Bennett, The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children (February 1992).

Much of the left-liberal elite despise traditional religious beliefs . . . in general, they are profoundly uncomfortable with religious institutions and the traditional values they embody.
~ William John Bennett, The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children (February 1992).

Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.
~ William T. Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge (1963).

Brotherhood is Religion!
~ William Blake, from Jerusalem (1804).

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93).

I am sure this Jesus will not do
Either for Englishman or Jew.
~ William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1810).

The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.
~ William Blake, Laocoön Aphorisms (c. 1818).

In answer to your enquiry, 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.
~ William Booth, in The War Cry (5 January 1901).

And we ask ourselves this question, "Why do they hate us? Why do they hate us so much?" Ladies and gentlemen, the answer to that is because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. Did I say Judeo-Christian? Yes. Judeo-Christian. . . . Our religion came from Judaism, and therefore these radicals will hate us forever.
~ Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, Speech at Celebrate America Event, Good Shepherd Church, Sandy OR (21 June 2003).

I am not anti-Islam or any other religion. I support the free exercise of all religions. For those who have been offended by my statements, I offer a sincere apology.
~ Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, Statement from the Pentagon Public Affairs Office (17 October 2003).

Some can only eat out of the silent dish, but I can not only eat out of that one, but out of the shouting dish, and jumping dish, and every other dish. My comrades used to tell me that was no religion, dancing, shouting and making so much to-do, but I was born in the fire and could not live in the smoke.
~ William Trewartha "Billy" Bray/p>

Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr., National Public Radio (Interview; 29 January 1987).

The mystic, the authoritarian, the sacramentarian, the radical individualist, these -- to mention only a few of the more outstanding types -- must be reckoned with in any comprehensive program for Christian unity.
~ William Adam Brown, Christian Unity: Its Principles and Possibilities (1921).

Christian civilization is the greatest that the world has ever known because it rests on a conception of life that makes life one unending progress toward higher things, with no limit to advancement or development.
~ William Jennings Bryan

If we have to give up either religion or education, we should give up education.
~ William Jennings Bryan, Contribution to The Commoner (January 1923)

Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr., National Review (1990).

Now, Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace, and charity -- what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong -- a series of unprecedented horrors perpetrated by so called Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadors, the American Indian wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt.
~ William S. Burroughs, from Roosevelt After Inauguration (1979 edition). Sects and Death

Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, My Mortal Enemy (1926).

Christianity is not only confirmed by miracles, but is in itself, in its very essence, a miraculous religion.
~ William Ellery Channing, Discourse Delivered at the Dudleian Lecture, University in Cambrige (14 March 1821). On The Evidences of Revealed Religion

I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), Discourse At The Ordination Of The Rev. F.A. Farley, Providence RI (1828). Likeness to God

The more I examine Christianity, the more I am struck with its universality. I see in it a religion made for all regions and all times, for all classes and all stages of society.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), from The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. (1841). Reasonableness of Christianity

The great end in religious instruction, whether in the Sunday-school or family, is not to stamp our minds irresistibly upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to burden memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), from The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. (1841). The Sunday-School

The Christian religion, then, is not an affair of preaching, or prating, or ranting, but of taking care of the bodies as well as the souls of people; not an affair of belief and of faith and of professions but an affair of doing good, and especially to those who are in want; not an affair of fire and brimstone, but an affair of bacon and read, beer and a bed.
~ William Cobbett, in the Political Register (15 February 1834).

Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word -- to science, to history, to what reason and our own experience tell us. We do not honor the higher truth we find in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality (1999).

For Christians, the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., An Open Letter To The Roman Catholic Bishops Of America (Presented on 14 November 2000 in Washington).

And Satan trembles, when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
~ William Cowper, from Olney Hymns (1779). Book II: On Occasional Subjects. Exhortation to Prayer

Religion does not censure or exclude
Unnumbered pleasures, harmlessly pursued.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Retirement

The shelves are full, all other themes are sped;
Hackney'd and worn to the last flimsy thread.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Table Talk (written in 1781)

While thousands, careless of the damning sin,
Kiss the book's outside who ne'er look within.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Expostulation

Among all the great religions of the world there is none more catholic, more assimilative, than the mass of beliefs which go to make up what is popularly known as Hinduism.
~ William (W.) Crooke, An Introduction to the Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (1894).

Some may be color-blind, but others see the bright hues of sunrise. Some may have no religious sense, but others live and move and have their being in the transcendent glory of god.
~ William Cecil Dampier, A History of Science (1942).

As with gladness, men of old
Did the guiding star behold
As with joy they hailed its light
Leading onward, beaming bright
So, most glorious Lord, may we
Evermore be led to Thee.
~ William C. Dix, As With Gladness Men of Old (1860)

What Child is this who, laid to rest
On Mary's lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.
~ William C. Dix, The Manger Throne (evolving into "What Child Is This?"; 1865)

Freedom is won by relegating religion to a purely private sphere remote from the body politic. In fact, the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture.
~ William Donohue, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books (1985). The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union

To the ACLU, the First Amendment speaks more directly to freedom from religion than it does to freedom of religion.
~ William Donohue, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books (May 1994). Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU

Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater it curtails human freedom.
~ William Orville Douglas, The Bible and the Schools (1966).

Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs.
~ William Orville Douglas

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. . . . We find no such Constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence. . . . The First Amendment does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of church and state.
~ William Orville Douglas, Zorach v. Clausen (1952).

Lord of the springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile--sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voices of our friends. Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois

I'm not a religious person. If I get close to religion it's in these moments when people faint and shudder and have orgasms with religious fervor -- I don't think they're kidding. And I'm envious.
~ David William Duchovny, Playboy Interview: David Duchovny (December 1998).

In many respects religion is the most interesting of man's ways, for it is his ultimate commentary on life and his only defense against death.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume IV (1950). The Age of Faith

The baptized churches are subdivided into three parts, one church is for free will, a second for universal redemption, a third count themselves mere Orthodox in Doctrine, as the Church of England. Neither of these three baptized Churches do communicate one with the other.
~ William Erbery, The Sword Doubled to Cut Off Both the Righteous and the Wicked (1653).

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by the word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes him or herself a better human being than their nature wants to be, if they followed their nature only. Whatever its symbol -- cross or crescent or whatever -- that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.
~ William Faulkner, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

The best sermon is preached by the minister who has a sermon to preach and not by the man who has to preach a sermon.
~ William Feather

I'm looking for loopholes. (Said when caught reading the Bible.)
~ W.C. Fields

We believe that to love the Good and to live the Good is the supreme thing in religion.
~ William Channing Gannett, Proposed at the Western Unitarian Conference (1887). Things Commonly Believed Among Us

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.
~ Bill Gates, in Time Magazine (13 January 1997). In Search of the Real Bill Gates

I think of religions as franchise operations, sort of like chicken franchises. But that doesn't mean there's no chicken, right?
~ William Gibson, in No Maps for These Territories (2000).

I, for my part, believe that nothing ever was, or ever will be, hostile to religion which is agreeable to justice.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, in The Liberator (1 February 1868).

A real Christian is the one who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.
~ Billy Graham

Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion -- it is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.
~ Billy Graham

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.
~ Billy Graham

Churchgoers are like coals in a fire. When they cling together, they keep the flame aglow; when they separate, they die out.
~ Billy Graham

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.
~ Billy Graham

It is unnatural for Christianity to be popular.
~ Billy Graham

Many people have come to Christ as a result of my participation in presenting the Gospel to them. It's all the work of the Holy Spirit.
~ Billy Graham, The Cincinnati Enquirer (Interview; 30 June 2002). Graham reveals weakened health

No man ever loved like Jesus. He taught the blind to see and the dumb to speak. He died on the cross to save us. He bore our sins. And now God says, "Because He did, I can forgive you".
~ Billy Graham

The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, "O God, forgive me," or "Help me".
~ Billy Graham

The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
~ Billy Graham, Response to the U.S. Supreme Court's verdict in Engle v. Vitale (barring school-sponsored prayer)

The most eloquent prayer is the prayer through hands that heal and bless. The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of prase is the the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.
~ Billy Graham, in The Chicago American (16 April 1967).

The number one problem in our world is alienation, rich versus poor, black versus white, labor versus management, conservative versus liberal, East versus West . . . But Christ came to bring about reconciliation and peace.
~ Billy Graham

The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not, "What a lovely sermon!" but "I will do something."
~ Billy Graham

Theology never changes. A man's heart is the same. The Gospel is the same. There have been no additions to the Gospel that was preached in the first century, and there is no difference in the reading of the events of the first century; morally, they're still the same. The same old sins, the same old problems, basically, that they faced in Egypt we face today in America.
~ Billy Graham, Quoted in The Washington Times (25 November 1996).

World travel and getting to know clergy of all denominations has helped mold me into an ecumenical being. We're separated by theology and, in some instances, culture and race, but all that means nothing to me any more.
~ Billy Graham, in U.S. News & World Report (19 December 1988).

The religion of the Hindus is rich in legend and stupendous allegory. It is a religion of great dignity and beauty. Its wrestlings with reality are as courageous as any in the whole history of mankind. . . . Indian thought has generally been contemplative, it has seldom been enamored of the material side of life.
~ William John (W.J.) Grant, The Spirit of India (1933).

God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill.
~ William Gurnall

The soldier is summoned to a life of active duty and so is the Christian.
~ William Gurnall, The Christian In Complete Armour (1665).

Why didn't someone tell me that I can become a Christian and settle the doubts afterward?
~ William Rainey Harper

Nobody has ever drifted into a genuine Christian experience.
~ William T. Ham

The Christian Church has a secret in her heart and she wants to share it.
~ William T. Ham

There are many things which a person can do alone, but being a Christian is not one of them.
~ William T. Ham

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accomodate it to the prejudices of the world.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Round Table (1817). On the Causes of Methodism

The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knowledge.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel, The Philosophy of Religion (1827).

Religion is moral life rising to think, i.e., becoming aware of the free universality of its concrete essence . . . the consciousness of "absolute" truth.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel, The Philosophy of Mind (c. 1818).

I think if I had to preach week in and week out, especially in a culture saturated with entertainment, I would tack a reminder to myself in the pulpit: "It's about God, stupid!"
~ William D. Hendricks, Exit Interviews

Worship, or prayer, is the especial sphere of the will in religion.
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912).

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave. Everything I am and everything I want out of life goes smack back to that.
~ Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography).

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
~ William Dean Howells, The Heathens (1948).

He whose theme is divine, and whose actions are wrong,
Proves religion is solely confin'd to his tongue.
~ William Hutton, from Poems, chiefly tales (1804). Maxims

The Church has lived by its monopolies and conquered by its intolerance.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, First Series (1919). Our Present Discontents

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus (1918).

The church is only a secular institution in which the half-educated speak to the half-converted.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Idea of Progress (Romanes Lecture, May 1920)

Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture XX: Conclusions

[R]eligion, occupying herself with personal destinies and keeping thus in contact with the only absolute realities which we know, must necessarily play an eternal part in human history.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture XX: Conclusions

Religion . . . shall mean for us, the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic

Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life, so why not say that any total reaction upon life is a religion?
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures XI, XII, and XIII: Saintliness

As an atheist you have to rationalize things. . . . Then you have to try and make some sort of sense out of your problems. And if you try and find you can't, you have no choice but to be good and scared -- but that's okay!
~ Billy Joel

And if you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.
~ William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728). Chapter II

Faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like.
~ William Law

For surely they mistake the whole nature of religion, who can think any part of their life is made more easy, for being free from it. They may well be said to mistake the whole nature of wisdom, who do not think it desirable to be always wise.
~ William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728). Chapter V

Piety requires us to renounce no ways of life, where we can act reasonably, and offer what we do to the glory of God.
~ William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728). Chapter XI

Religion is not ours till we live by it, till it is the Religion of our thoughts, words, and actions, till it goes with us into every place, sits uppermost on every occasion, and forms and governs our hopes and fears, our cares and pleasures.
~ William Law, A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (1726).

This, and this alone, is Christianity, a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world, but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God.
~ William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728). Chapter X

When religion is in the hands of the mere natural man, he is always the worse for it; it adds a bad heat to his own dark fire, and helps to inflame his four elements of selfishness, envy, pride, and wrath. And hence it is that worse passions, or a worse degree of them, are to be found in persons of great religious zeal than in others that make no pretenses to it.
~ William Law, The Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Regeneration (1739).

Religions, considered as moral teachers, are realized and effective only when their moral teaching is in conformity with the teaching of their age.
~ William Edward Hartpole (E.H.) Lecky, History of European Morals, I (1869).

When it began, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of human reason; it was impious to question; it was impious to examine; it was impious to discriminate. On the other hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly from all its parts.
~ William Edward Hartpole (E.H.) Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I (1865). Chapter II: On The Declining Sense of the Miraculous

Religion to me is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need.
~ Bill Maher

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

The value of persistent prayer is not that he will hear us . . . but that we will finally hear him.
~ William McGill

This summer the Kremlin will help the Church celebrate its millennium: the baptism of Russia, one thousand years ago.
~ Bill McLaughlin, CBS TV Evening News (6 March 1988).

The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.
~ William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (October 1995).

Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life.
~ William Lamb (2nd Viscount, Lord Melbourne), after hearing an evangelical sermon.

The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our notions on character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions. From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred Scriptures. From all these extracts from the Bible I make no apology.
~ William Holmes McGuffey, The Eclectic First Reader: For Young Children (1836). Preface

Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me in the stars.
~ William Morris, The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems (1858). Summer Dawn

This willful deafness to religious argument, so new in our history, has had various effects. A principal one is encouragement of the already widespread view that religion doesn't have a lot to do with modern concerns -- the way people live, the way they think.
~ William Murchison, Reclaiming Morality in America (1994).

Christianity makes suffering contagious.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878).

I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888).

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The last Christian died on the cross.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Religion smooths all inequalities, because it unfolds a prospect which makes all earthly distinctions nothing.
~ William Paley, Reasons For Contentment, Addressed To The Labouring Part Of The British Public (sermon given in 1790; published in 1793).

The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination.
~ William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794).

I know no religion that destroys courtesy, civility, and kindness.
~ William Penn, Letter to Justice Fleming (1673)

It were better to be of no church, than to be bitter for any.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693).

Religion is nothing else but love of God and man.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693).

The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious and Devout Souls, are everywhere of one religion; and when Death has taken off the Mask, they will know one another, though the divers Liveries they wear here make them Strangers.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693).

To have Religion upon Authority, and not upon Conviction, is like a Finger Watch, to be set forwards or backwards, as he pleases that has it in keeping.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Religion

[E]very age thinks it is perfect, especially in religion.
~ William Pickens

One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature -- a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.
~ W. (William) Winwood Reade , The Martyrdom of Man (1872).

However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do.
~ Frederick William (F.W.) Robertson

To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.
~ Frederick William (F.W.) Robertson, The Glory of the Divine Son (30 January 1853).

Fanatical religion driven to a certain point is almost as bad as none at all, but not quite.
~ Will Rogers

I was just thinking, if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime.
~ Will Rogers

My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell (lecture to the National Secular Society; 6 March 1927), Why I Am Not A Christian (1964).

Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history, power has been the vice of the ascetic.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, in New York Herald - Tribune Magazine (6 May 1938).

The question of the truth of a religion is one thing, but the question of its usefulness is another. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell (lecture to the National Secular Society; 6 March 1927), Why I Am Not A Christian (1964).

There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was. This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great religions of the world -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism -- both untrue and harmful.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

With very few exceptions, the religion which a man accepts is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of environment is what has led him to accept the religion in question.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

In ancient shadows and twilights
Where childhood had strayed,
The world's great sorrows were born
And its heroes were made.
In the lost boyhood of Judas
Christ was betrayed.
~ George William (A.E.) Russell, Germinal (1931)

Mythology is the religious sentiment growing wild.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling

If religion is essentially of the inner life, it follows that it can be truly grasped only from within.
~ Wilhelm Schmidt, The Origin and Growth of Religion (1931).

And if a guy won't listen -- why, I sock him on the jaw,
And preach the Gospel sitting on his chest.
~ Robert William Service, Bar-Room Ballads (1940). The Ballad of Salvation Bill

Don't go out of here talking about tongues; talk about Jesus.
~ William Joseph Seymour (c. 1906)

He prays but faintly and would be denied.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II

In those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV

O father Abram! what these Christians are,
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect
The thoughts of others!
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vaporous drop profound;
I'll catch it ere it comes to ground.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act III, scene v

We should have made a stronger sense of apology and acknowledgement of mistakes made. It doesn't hurt to overdo the fact that we need to be responsible for our mistakes and accountable to the church.
~ Bishop William S. Skylstad, The Salt Lake Tribune (8 June 2002). Catholic Bishop: 'We Have to Do Something and . . . Quickly'

Our Father Who art in Heaven
can lick their Father Who art in Heaven.
~ William Stafford, from Stories That Could Be True (1977). Religion Back Home

[F]ervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion.
~ Wilhelm Stekel, in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, Volume II (1948).

I believe that a preacher has a right to use any legitimate way under God's sun of producing an atmosphere of reverence and worship in the minds and hearts of the people who come to church.
~ William Leroy "Bill" Stidger, Quoted in Evangelism's First Modern Media Star: Reverend Bill Stidger (2002).

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

I don't know any more about theology than jackrabbit does about ping pong, but I'm on my way to glory.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

The devil says I'm out, but the Lord says I'm safe.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, Sermon in New York (1914).

They tell me a revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

Christianity is the most materialistic of all great religions.
~ William Temple (archbishop), Readings in St. John's Gospel. Volume 1 (1939)

It is a mistake to suppose that God is only, or even chiefly, concerned with religion.
~ William Temple (archbishop), The Hope of a New World (1940).

Neutrality in religion is impossible, exactly because religion covers the whole field of thought and conduct.
~ William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury)

The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.
~ William Temple (archbishop), in Some Lambeth Letters (1963).

The heart of Religion is not an opinion about God, such as philosophy might reach as the conclusion of an argument; it is a personal relation with God.
~ William Temple (Archbishop of York), from Nature, Man and God: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Glasgow in the Academic Years 1932-1933 and 1933-1934 (1934).

The life of faith does not earn eternal life: it is eternal life. And Christ is its vehicle.
~ William Temple (archbishop)

When I pray, coincidences start to happen. When I don't pray, they don't happen.
~ William Temple (archbishop)

One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.
~ Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God (1966). Chapter 19, Part 1. The Communion of Saints

No religion can claim exclusive truth (says the New Agers). Because orthodox Christianity commits this unpardonable sin, it is the major obstacle to the religious and social harmony of the planet.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996).

Secularism is becoming religion's replacement. And it is bringing with it a breakdown of the moral, spiritual, and intellectual fiber that religion, especially Christianity, held together for centuries on the North American Continent.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996).

The Sixties movement did not rebel against religion. It rebelled against the Christian religion.
~ William D. Watkins, The New Absolutes (1996).

[I] hold that the Christian aim for the foreseeable future should be to bring the religions together in friendly dialogue and, where possible, in cooperation, for there is a sense in which all are threatened by the rising tide of secularism and materialism.
~ William Montgomery Watt, in The Iona Community Coracle, issue 3:51 (2000). An interview with "the Last Orientalist"

Islam is still in many ways a man's religion, but the position of women was improved at various points by Muham­mad and the new religion he proclaimed.
~ William Montgomery Watt, in Studia Missionalia, Vol. 40 (1991). Women in the Earliest Islam

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Christianity, be it remembered, proposes not to extinguish our natural desires, but to bring them under just control and direct them to their true objects.
~ William Wilberforce

Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?
~ William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country, Contrasted With Real Christianity (1797). Chapter V

It is indeed a most lamentable consequence of the practice of regarding religion as a compilation of statutes, and not as an internal principle, that it soon comes to be considered as being conversant about external actions rather than about habits of mind. This sentiment sometimes has even the hardiness to insinuate and maintain itself under the guise of extraordinary concern for practical religion; but it soon discovers the falsehood of this pretension, and betrays its real nature.
~ William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country, Contrasted With Real Christianity (1797). Chapter IV

They know indeed that they are mortal, but they do not feel it. The truth rests in their understandings, and cannot gain admission into their hearts.
~ William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country, Contrasted With Real Christianity (1797). Chapter IV

One of the genuine phenomenons over the past four decades has been the liberal community's steadfast insistence that God should be barred from the public sphere. This is not law. It is religious prejudice.
~ Armstrong Williams, The upcoming docket (14 October 2003).

It was . . . as difficult to be quite orthodox as to be quite healthy. Yet the need for orthodoxy, like the need for health, is imperative.
~ Charles Walter Stansby Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (1939).

The history of Christendom itself would have been far happier could we all have remembered that rule of intelligence -- not to believe a thing more strongly at the end of a bitter argument than at the beginning, not to believe it with the energy of the opposition rather than one's own.
~ Charles Walter Stansby Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (1939).

We say grace and we say Amen. If you ain't into that, we don't give a damn.
~ Hank Williams, Jr.

Be thou my Guardian and my Guide,
And hear me when I call;
Let not my slippery footsteps slide,
And hold me lest I fall.
~ Isaac Williams

Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.
~ Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for the Cause of Conscience (1644).

That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it.
~ Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for the Cause of Conscience (1644).

This tenet of the magistrates' keeping the church from apostasizing, by practicing civil force upon the consciences of men, is so far from preserving religion pure that it is a mighty bulwark or barricade to keep out all true religion.
~ Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for the Cause of Conscience (1644).

We find not in the Gospel, that Christ hath anywhere provided for the uniformity of churches, but only for their unity.
~ Roger Williams

Our religious institutions have far too often become handmaidens of the status quo, while the genuine religious experience is anything but that. True religion is by nature disruptive of what has been, giving birth to the eternally new.
~ Marianne Williamson

The purpose of daily prayer is the cultivation of a sense of the sacred. Sacred energy renews us.
~ Marianne Williamson

For us Christians, all truth is "relative," relative to this Jew named Jesus. We really do not know what the world is, much less where it is headed, until we know Him.
~ William H. Willimon, in Journal for Preachers 19 (1996). Postmodern Preaching: Learning to Love the Thickness of the Text

Religion embarrasses the commentators. It is offbounds. An editor of the old Life magazine once assigned me a book on religion with remark that I was the only "religious nut" -- his term for a believer -- in his stable of regular reviewers.
~ Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (1990).

We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect.
~ Andrew Norman (A.N.) Wilson, Against Religion: Why We Should Live Without It (1991).

When we have examined the evidence, it will seem at the very least highly unlikely that Jesus, a Galilean exorcist executed in circa the year 30, probably for sedition, had any ambitions to found a world religion.
~ Andrew Norman (A.N.) Wilson, Quoted in The Washington Times (13 April 1997). Paul: The Mind of the Apostle

Once a Catholic always a Catholic.
~ Angus Wilson, The Wrong Set (1949).

The thing that still irks me about all organized religion is their claim how confoundedly right all of them are.
~ Bill Wilson (written in 1948), Quoted in Hazelden (1991). Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous

Perfect religious freedom [was] established in the United States, without any control exercised by the civil authority over spiritual concerns. In consequence of this, every denomination was . . . without . . . disadvantages arising from the connection of religion with secular policy.
~ Rev. Bird Wilson, Memoir of the Life of the Right Reverend William White (1939).

[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).

Religion is ultimately a product of evolution and natural selection. Above all, these feelings bind us to family and to the tribe. . . . We are religious to survive; we surrender to the tribe and its sacred rites in a gamble for both personal and genetic immortality.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, in Free Inquiry magazine. Spring 1987, Volume 7 Number 2. Biology's Spiritual Products

[T]heology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).

Since theological propositions are scientifically meaningless, those of us of pragmatic disposition simply won't buy such dubious merchandise. . . . Maybe -- remotely -- there might be something in such promotions, as there might be something in the talking dogs and the stocks in Arabian tapioca mines that W.C. Fields once sold in his comedies, but we suspect that we recognize a con game in operation. At least, we want to hear the dog talk or see the tapioca ore before we buy into such deals.
~ Robert Anton Wilson

The number of good preachers may have decreased. But so has the number of good listeners.
~ Spencer Wilson, The (London) Times (20 August 1968).

The modern pulpit is so often simply the platform for the subjective feelings of the preacher, or of his world view, or of his most recent reading.
~ William J. Wolf, Man's Knowledge of God (1955).

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity.
~ William Wordsworth, Evening on Calais Beach (1802)