I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble minds harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

- Albert Einstein

If Christianity is wine and Islam coffee, Buddhism is most certainly tea.

- Alan Watts

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

- Thomas Paine

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

- Robert G. Ingersoll

Fundamentalism is rigorously and systematically used to indoctrinate and subjugate young minds. It is a contraceptive designed to prevent intellectual fertilization.

- Stephen Jay Gould

Nor is religion manifold, because there are various sects and heresies in the world. When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion but the Church of England.

- Henry Fielding

I'm a committed Christian. I worship in my own way. That's my business. That's not the business of the pharisees who are going to preach to me about what I do and then do something else.

- Howard Dean

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

- Madeleine L'Engle

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!

- Frederick Douglass

Jesus as a person does not exist outside the gospels. The only Jesus we have is the Jesus of faith.

- Gary Wills

The doctrines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon Himself human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand; in fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than would a statement, that a circle had taken upon itself the nature of a, square.

- Baruch Spinoza

Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.

- Salman Rushdie

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

- G. K. Chesterton

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

- John Calvin

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

- James Russell Lowell

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

- John Wesley



We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.

- Pearl S. Buck



If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.

- Edward R. Murrow



I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

- C. S. Lewis



Christianity has been buried inside the walls of churches and secured with the shackles of dogmatism. Let it be liberated to come into the midst of us and teach us freedom, equality and love.

- Minna Canth



The church has failed to follow her appointed pathway of separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony to an absent but coming Christ; she has turned aside from that purpose to the work of civilizing the world, building magnificent temples, and acquiring earthly power and wealth, and, in this way, has ceased to follow in the footsteps of Him who had not where to lay His head.

- C. I. Scofield



He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge



Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge



The true call of a Christian is not to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way.

- Dean Stanley



Someone has said, "If we could get religion like a Baptist, experience it like a Methodist, be positive about it like a Disciple, be proud of it like an Episcopalian, pay for it like a Presbyterian, propagate it like an Adventist, and enjoy it like an Afro-American -- that would be some religion!" (attributed)

- Harry Emerson Fosdick



Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.

- Leo Tolstoy



Christian: One who thinks the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

- Ambrose Bierce



One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.

- C. S. Lewis



Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?

- John Calvin



If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

- C. S. Lewis



Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts - the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

- Alexis de Tocqueville



No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

- Otto von Bismarck



If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

- Isaac Asimov



A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the sense, of the joy of the senses, of joy in general is Christian.

- Friedrich Nietzsche



Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness.

- C. S. Lewis



Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.

- A. W. Tozer



Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others.

- Kathleen Norris



The moral and religious system which Jesus Christ transmitted to us is the best the world has ever seen, or can see.

- Benjamin Franklin



Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes



That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.

- Abraham Lincoln



When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, "Let all children come unto me."

- Marian Wright Edelman



[Jesus'] ministry was clearly defined, and the alternatives to the illusion and temptations of the desert were spelled out. A choice was made -- life abundant, full, and free for all. Make no mistake about it, the day that choice was made, Jesus became suspect. That day in the temple he sealed the fate already prepared for him. How was the world to understand one who rejected an offer of power and control?

Sojourners, August-September, 1991

- Joan B. Campbell



If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!

Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

- Ma Ferguson



I didn't know Onward Christian Soldiers was a Christian song.

at a non-denominational mayor's breakfast, Fort Worth, Texas

- Aggie Pate



Politics are not the task of a Christian.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer