Religiosity Quotes

“We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavour to efface them.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“The basic religious idea in all patriarchal religions is the negation of the sexual needs. Only in very primitive religions were religiosity and sexuality identical. When social organization passed from matriarchy to patriarchy and class society, the unity of religious and sexual cult underwent a split; the religious cult became the antithesis of the sexual. With that, the cult of sexuality went out of existence. It was replaced by the brothel, pornography and backstairs-sexuality. It goes without saying that when sexual experiences ceased to be one with the religious cults, when, instead, they became antithetical to them, religious excitation assumed a new function: that of being a substitute for the lost sexual pleasure, now no longer affirmed by society. Only this contradiction inherent in religious excitation makes the strength and the tenacity of the religions understandable: the contradiction of its being at one and the same time antisexual and a substitute for sexuality.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

“Sometimes it’s about knowing people, all of the time, it’s about knowing God!”
― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“It becomes ever increasingly clear to many students of man and of the contemporary scene that the crucial difficulty with which we are confronted lies in the fact that the development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed—he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical over-maturity and emotional backwardness?”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“La oss derfor lide uten håp om en eneste varig glede i dette livet siden vi, mine brødre, allerede er i helvete.”
― August Strindberg, Inferno

“Probably one of the most surprising discoveries I've made while studying the Bible is that God does not condone religion. It's a consistent theme throughout scripture. Religion is man's external effort to please God. But God doesn't care about all my efforts to get it right. He wants more, something far greater.”
― Chris Hodges, Fresh Air: Trading Stale Spiritual Obligation for a Life-Altering, Energizing, Experience-It-Everyday Relationship with God

“It is God who does miracles, not your works, religiosity.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“King David in Psalm 37 writes "Take delight in the Giver, and He will give you the desires of your heart," intimating that the secret to finding our way in the world is more about cooperating with God than appeasing God.

That the Giver of life is also the Giver of our desires, which means that life has an invitational co-creative nature to it...

Why do we always believe that the path of our deepest desire would be so far from the path that God would have us walk? How is the path of desire so different from the path to the Giver of that desire?”
― Scott Erickson, Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream

“A completely different aspect, however, the thoroughly incommensurable one, lies in the imposition of accepting that the torso sees me while I observe it - indeed, that it eyes me more sharply than I can look at it.

The ability to perform the inner gesture with which one makes space for this improbability inside oneself most probably consists precisely in the talent that Max Weber denied having. This talent is 'religiosity', understood as an innate disposition and a talent that can be developed, making it comparable to musicality. One can practise it, just as one practises melodic passages or syntactic patterns. In this sense, religiosity is congruent with a certain grammatical promiscuity. Where it operates, objects elastically exchange places with subjects.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“She was artificially narrowing herself, amputating every humane and tender piece that didn’t fit into a rigid frame.”
― David Brooks

“No life is specially interesting. Almost everybody does the same thing and shares the common career and money-related interests regardless if he is a scientist, an artist or an economist. Almost everybody spends the similar life style — relaxation and satisfaction of the needs of stomach and sex organ. Almost everybody does his best to pass down his genes through originating and nurturing the next generation. Patriotism, intellectuality, religiosity and so on, and so forth are only a pose but not the intrinsic parts of the mental state, of course, if one doesn’t suffer from serious psychological disorder. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. For that reason most men, if not any, tend to wear a mask of patriotism, intellectuality or religiosity in order to give to his ordinary life some “richness of content.”
― Elmar Hussein

“We have been deceived that religiosity is equal to personal relationship with God.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Replace your religiosity with the virtues of personal work with God”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Religiosity has deprived us of our intimacy with God.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“You become void of products when you waste your time in religious meetings every day.”
― Sunday Adelaja, How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?

“The Dragon is the gatekeeper to the Divine Court who lets pass only those who have stripped off all the garments of religiosity and custom, and who are ready and willing to give up their very lives. For beyond this desert, the Sufi loses him or herself and gains Allah. That is why they call it a desert. That is why it is such a frightening place, for the ego cannot pass by the Gatekeeper!”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“Why do we always believe that the path of our deepest desire would be so far from the path that God would have us walk? How is the path of desire so different from the path to the Giver of that desire?”
― Scott Erickson, Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream

“One cannot despise Christians and love Christ at the same time. Too many are fooled into the self-righteous notion that those who stand boldly in the faith are nothing more than religious zealots and Pharisees, and that they themselves are closer to Jesus by communing with the mockers.”
― Criss Jami

“She tried not to be judgmental of others. With her family, she couldn’t afford to be. They were a good example of a spectrum of religiosity, with Leedya representing the more liberal end and Maryam holding on firmly to a more conservative outlook. The rest of them fell more or less in the middle. Elizza would give her opinion on matters of religion if asked, but never felt comfortable correcting or imposing it on others.”
― Hannah Matus, A Second Look

“It is not wealth, reputation, fame, power, success or even religiosity that glorifies God. It is weakness & surrenderness.”
― indonesia123

“À trop tutoyer le divin, on titille le malin.

Too much suckle the divine, tickles the devil”
― Francois Marchal

“I was raised to believe Jesus was my best friend. It's hard to say who introduced Jesus and me. My mother, or maybe her mother or her mother before her. Though maybe in Oklahoma, you're just born with this familiarity, the way you can tell if a tornado's coming from the color of the sky.”
― Angie Sullivan, Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches

“I remember thinking how exhausting it was to exist as a rational thinker in the Bible Belt. No one judged you based on your character; instead it was all about how many times per week you went to church.”
― Jennifer Welch, Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches