When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
— Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Quotes About Religion
The demons of animism were usually hostile to man, but it seems as though man had more confidence in himself in those days than later on.
— New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
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.
— The Name of the Rose
To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.
— Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion
Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.
The importance of Man, which is the one indispensable dogma of the theologians, receives no support from a scientific view of the future of the solar system.
— An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity
There are wolves within, and there are sheep without.
— City of God
After the evil spirit of a narrow Scholastic orthodoxy has been driven out, in the end seven much more wicked spirits return in its place.
— The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today's Debates
He who, while unacquainted with these writings, nevertheless knows by the natural light that there is a God having the attributes we have recounted, and who also pursues a true way of life, is altogether blessed.
— Theological-Political Treatise
Moreover God hath ordained man in this world, as it were, the very image of himself, to the intent, that he, as it were a god on earth, should provide for the wealth of all creatures.
— Against War
A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.
— The Works: Voltaire
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
— Songs of Innocence and of Experience
National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.
— The Prague Cemetery
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce...
— On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.
— Theological-Political Treatise
We being satiate with continual wars, let the desire of peace a little move us.
— Against War
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.
— Philosophical Dictionary
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
— The Tyger
Only by having a sense of history's trajectory (even if one does not believe in Parousia) can one love earthly reality and believe—with charity—that there is still room for Hope.
— Belief or Nonbelief?
If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.