Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

I've always felt like there are certain politicians that wear their religion on their sleeve in a way that you almost feel is disingenuous. I think that your faith has to be first personal. I struggle with those people that preach something and go back behind closed doors and live differently.

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.

Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

We have only God on our side; they have 'In God We Trust' on their side.

The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

I try to act out of faith.

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

So, is Hollywood anti-religion? Not in my opinion. But unlike, say, politicians and preachers who talk faith before going off to speak in tongues to their mistresses, Hollywood just doesn't wear its faith on its sleeve.

Christianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime.

There's good and bad everywhere in any aspect in life. The only people who we can't really trust are politicians. Because those guys lie to everybody and constantly.

The pride of life hath corrupted the judgment of others, and perverted them in the way of religion.

Faith is important to me.

Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesome.

Benjamin Disraeli might be an excellent Christian but he is assuredly a detestable pagan.

Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses.

There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.

We eat, drink, and sleep religion, but we do not do good.

If you impose morality on people, they will find ways to circumvent their guilt. They will make offerings to temples - or other places of worship - but also continue doing things that make them feel guilty.

Once, John and I were coming form a concert that he had played, and it was late in the morning. We heard a couple leaving, and the lady said, oh, I have to hurry home. I'm going to church tomorrow. And her friends said, church? You've already been to church.

And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them, and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I saw that people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly, as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me, as much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life; but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil and an absurdity. And really my life—a life of indulgence of desires—was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, “Life is evil and an absurdity,” referred only to my life, but not to human life in general.

Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks a little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.