Funky quotes about religion

tHere are some funky quotes about religion from the future of religion episode of the spirit of things

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Karl Marx, 1844.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

Edmund Burke, 1795

Religion’s in the heart, not in the knees.

Douglas Jerrold, 1830

Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes, a restraint on the wicked. Therefore, whoever would laugh or argue it out of the world, without giving some equivalent for it, ought to be treated as a Common enemy.

Mary Wortley Montague, 1752

No-one knows who will live in this iron cage in the future. Or whether at the end of this tremendous development, entirely new prophets will arise. Or there will be a great rebirth of the old ideas and ideals. Or if neither, a mechanised petrification embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last men of this cultural development, it might well be truly said, specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.

Max Weber, 1920

So long as man remains free, he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully, as to find someone to worship.

Feodor Dostoyevsky, 1879

As societies become greater in volume and density, they increase in complexity. Work is divided, individual differences multiply, the moment approaches when the only remaining bond among the members of a single human group will be that they are all men. Since human personality is the only thing that appeals unanimously to all heart, since its enhancement is the only aim that can be collectably pursued, it rises above all human aids assuming a religious nature.

Emile Durkheim, 1897

Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life!

Lord Melbourne

Religion, which true policy befriends,
designed by God to serve man’s noblest ends,
is, by that old deceiver’s subtle play,
made the chief party in its own decay.

Katherine Phillips