They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse - Emily Dickinson
These church steeples, everywhere pointing upward, ignoring despair and lifting hope, these lofty city spires, or simple chapels in the hills -- they rise at every step from the earth toward the sky; in every village of every nation they challenge doubt and invite weary hearts to consolation. Is it all a vain delusion? Is there nothing beyond life but death, and nothing beyond death but decay? We cannot know. But as long as man suffers, these steeples will remain - Will Durant, 1885-1981
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle - Albert Einstein
The world is my country. Humanity is my family. To do good is my religion - Thomas Paine
The wicked thing about both the little and the great "collective faiths," prehistoric and historic, is that they all, without exception, pretend to hold encompassed in their ritualised mythologies all of the truth ever to be known - Joseph Campbell
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism - Reinhold Niebuhr, American clergyman and author (1892-1971)
The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born - Mark Twain
The search for happiness based upon untrue beliefs is neither very noble nor very glorious. There is a stark joy in the unflinching perception of our true place in the world ... No man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness - Bertrand Russell
The science of today is allowed to argue its case against the religion of thousands of years ago - Andrew Klavan http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0703/30special_klavan.html
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not - Eric Hoffer