“Why do born-again people so often make you wish they’d never been born the first time?” ——Katherine Whitehorn, British Journalist, The Observer, May 20, 1979
“If it weren’t for Christians, I’d be a Christian.” ——Mahatma Gandhi
“I would have met Jesus sooner if not for Christians who led double lives.” ——Keith Green
“I might believe in the Redeemer if His followers looked more Redeemed.” ——Friedrich Nietzsche
“It has always seemed unfair to me that many churches (and some individual Christians) keep careful records on how many converts they make to Christianity, but never keep any record of how many they drive away from Christ!” ——Ray C. Stedman
“The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little by way of example.” ——Mark Twain
“If the truth were known, many sermons are prepared and preached with more regard for the sermon than the souls of the hearers.” ——George F. Pentecost
“The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.” ——Robert Ingersoll
“People in religions are too busy doing their thing to even notice that God is doing His.” ——Martin Zender
“Religious men are and must be heretics now— for we must not pray, except in a ‘form’ of words, made beforehand— or think of God but with a prearranged idea.” ——Florence Nightingale
“A fanatic is someone who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject.” ——Sir Winston Churchill
“The underlying foundation of all religion is performance – whether it’s a tribal dance around a campfire to satisfy the fire god, or a dead religious activity performed week after week by an evangelical Christian with the intent of impressing his God. It’s all religious performance, and God isn’t impressed by our performance. What impresses Him is faith.” ——Steve McVey
“The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.” ——Robert Farrer Capon
“Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.” ——Oscar Wilde
“Christianity is NOT a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however – the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over – period.” ——Robert F. Capon
“Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God’s radical demand that we be holy.” ——Jacques Ellul, Perspectives on Our Age
“The truly wise talk little about religion and are not given to taking sides on doctrinal issues. When they hear people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in the church, they turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. They have no time, they would say, for that kind of thing. They have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.” ——George MacDonald
“Isn’t it strange that people place so much emphasis upon going to church when there is not one command from Jesus to do so, and yet neglect the basic duties of our ordinary life which are commanded on every page of the Gospels?” ——William Law
“Most of us spend the first six days of the week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.” ——Fred Allen
“Being a Methodist, a Catholic, or a Baptist does not make one a disciple, it only makes him a Methodist, a Catholic, or a Baptist, who may or may not be a daily follower of Jesus Christ.” ——Michael Phillips
“The self-righteous, relying on the many good works he imagines he has performed, seems to hold salvation in his own hand, and considers Heaven as a just reward of his merits. In the bitterness of his zeal he exclaims against all sinners, and represents the gates of mercy as barred against them, and Heaven as a place to which they have no claim. What need have such self-righteous persons of a Saviour? they are already burdened with the load of their own merits. Oh, how long they bear the flattering load, while sinners divested of everything, fly rapidly on the wings of faith and love into their Saviour’s arms, who freely bestows on them that which he has so freely promised!” ——Jeanne Guyon
“The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians–when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.” ——Joe Aldrich
“Everyday people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” ——Lenny Bruce
“Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.” ——Paul Tillich
“Be careful your head doesn’t grow faster than your heart.” ——Author Unknown
“The Pentecostal power, when you sum it all up, is just more of God’s love. If it does not bring more love, it is simply a counterfeit.” ——William J. Seymour
“Everywhere the apostle Paul went, he either had a revival, or he had a riot. Sometimes he had a revival and a riot. That’s what I want to be said of me.” ——Wade Akins
“If those who had set themselves to explain the various theories of Christianity had set themselves instead to do the will of the Master, how different the world would be now!” ——George MacDonald
“Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.” ——Benjamin Franklin
“Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn’t have guessed. That’s one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed.” ——C. S. Lewis
“Men choose a religion, but a Christian is chosen by Jesus Christ.” ——Iranian martyr Mehdi Dibaj
“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” ——G. K. Chesterton
“It is easier to move a mountain than it is to move a person entrenched in the ‘traditions of men which make the word of God of no effect.'” ——Gary Amirault (Matthew 15:6-9)
“One danger to any successful movement is that it becomes an institution and begins the slow process that leads to stagnation, one form of ‘loss of soul.’ Stagnation of a religious institution is like a box constructed around a quest in which the quest begins to define itself in terms of the box rather than the vision by which it was formed. When the trappings become more important than the message, the institution takes the path to stagnation. The process of stagnation begins, for example, when a congregation begins to think of its church as a building instead of the people and spirit. Stagnation also begins when religious people lose their vision and substitute customs, rules, and rituals for their treasured traditions.” ——Pastor James A. Ellison
“God may thunder His commands from Mount Sinai and men may fear, yet remain at heart exactly as they were before. But let a man once see his God down in the arena as a Man–suffering, tempted, sweating, and agonized, finally dying a criminal’s death–and he is a hard man indeed who is untouched.” ——J. B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small
“Religions stinks – all of them. The difference between religion and a living, vibrant relationship with the Father of all living souls through Jesus Christ, the Son of God is the difference between death (religion) and life (being born of God’s spirit through Jesus Christ). Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion or reform an old one, He came to give us LIFE, and more abundantly in this lifetime and beyond.” ——Gary Amirault
“To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” ——The Bible
“Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.” ——Buddha, Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta
“If the bible is universally diffused in Hindustan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder and steal; we who in fifty years, have extended our empire over the whole peninsula and exemplified in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is capable. What matchless impudence to follow up such practice with such precepts! If we have common prudence, let us keep the gospel at home, and tell them that Machiavelli is our prophet, and the god of the Manicheans our god.” ——The Reverend Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.” ——Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“I’m often amazed at the way politicians, who spend hours poring over opinion poll results in a desperate attempt to discover what the public thinks, are certain they know precisely what God’s views are on everything.” ——Simon Hoggart
“Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car.” ——Garrison Keillor
“Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them, he cried, ‘Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?’ …God said, ‘I did do something. I made you.'” ——Sufi Teaching
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.” ——Baba Dioum
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.” ——Robert A. Heinlein
“Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.” ——J. R. R. Tolkien
“I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“I wonder whether there is any one in this generation who accepts reproof, for if one says to him: Remove the mote from between your eyes, he would answer: Remove the beam from between your eyes!” ——Talmud, Baraitha, Rashi (1050-1115 AD), quoting Rabbi Tarfon
“Believers, let not a group of you mock another. Perhaps they are better than you. Let not one of you find faults in another nor let anyone of you defame another.” ——Holy Quran, Chapter 49:11 (Al-Hujarat)
“I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.” ——Adolf Hitler, Berlin, March 1936
“If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us.” ——Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg, October 3, 1937
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” ——Thomas Paine
“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” ——Isaiah 2:4, The Bible
“Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesome.” ——Benjamin Whichcote
“American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth. You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion and caring of most American people, and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good, but it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.” ——Peter Storey, former president of the Methodist Church of South Africa
“People who think of God as a warrior may become warriors themselves, whether in a Christian crusade, a Muslim jihad, or an apocalyptically oriented militia. People who think of God as righteous are likely to emphasize righteousness themselves, just as those who think of God as compassionate are likely to emphasize compassion. People who think God is angry at the world are likely to be angry at the world themselves.” ——Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew
“The curses of the ungodly are more pleasing to God’s ears than the hallelujahs of the pious.” ——Martin Luther
“Letting go of religious doctrine can be as difficult as overcoming drugs or alcohol or an unhealthy relationship.” ——Gary Amirault
“Iconoclast definition: One bent on blasting bastions of bull.” ——Gary Amirault
“Teach some or most of mankind will be lost for eternity and churches will accept you. Teach Jesus saves all and they will reject you. Little wonder then, that Jesus is leading His disciples OUT OF CHURCHES and bringing them unto Himself.” ——Gary Amirault, Tentmaker Ministries
“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.” ——Georgia Harkness
“…when men ignite in their hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness on their eyes.” ——James A. Michener, The Source
“Religion is nothing more than a meticulously planned, carefully orchestrated funeral procession.” ——Gary Amirault
“If we’d been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.” ——A sign inside a church in Northern Ireland, explaining the origin of intolerance and hate
“To many Jews Truth is anti-semitic, to many Christians Truth is anti-Christ and to many Moslems, Truth is inflammatory.” ——Gary Amirault
“The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave.” ——Mark Twain
“Why is it that ‘compassionate’ conservative, gun toting, patriotic, politically right wing Christians usually behave and speak more like Jewish Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers and scribes than Jesus Christ?” ——Gary Amirault