The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.
There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.
To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
Toleration is the best religion.
We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.
When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.
When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
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