Mark Twain Quotes

The factors that are the long-term influences on opinion in this country are education, social and economic background, and religion. Those are the great constants. People's basic attitudes change very little.

On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational -- to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

It is easier to rationalize than it is to be rational.

By and large, reporters and editors are devoutly secular and deeply distrustful of those who act on faith.

George Bush Junior [George W Bush] was a religious fanatic, and Tony Blair wasn't far behind in a way.

I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology).

I could show how largely our laws and customs are based upon the laws of Moses and the teachings of Christ; how constantly the Bible is appealed to as the guide of life and the authority in questions of morals... Add a volume of unofficial declaration to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

politics and religion in the United States work like the twin grips of a pair of pliers on a critical mass of the masses.

An interesting thing about the religious people who run Iran is that one of their problems with Ahmadinejad, who they thought would be one of their guys because he's so religious, is that he actually has some really nutty ideas about religion. He's too religious. He's too literal. I mean, there are plenty of people in Iran who like Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs, just as there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists in America who like George W. Bush's beliefs. But there are also plenty of people who are very uncomfortable with his overt religiosity.

I'm not a college graduate, but I don't know how George W.Bush could have truly believed that the flower of democracy was going to blossom in that part of the world, I mean Iraq - at least in part because the governments there are so tied to religion .

True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.

The shackles of belief, when reinforced by fear, are difficult to break free from and rarely done.

For a great nature, it is a happiness to escape a religious training; religion of character is so apt to be invaded.

Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you.

The fact that some religious fanatics might support a theory doesn't invalidate it, anymore than the concurrence of UFO abduction cults invalidates the notion of extra-terrestrial life.

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.

All religious beliefs seem weird to people not brought up in them.

As the courts keep pushing religion out of sight, the press either ignores it or treats it as some sort of emotional affliction. It is hardly any wonder that religion slowly loses its grip on the popular mind.

When emotion supersedes reason ... gullibility must follow.

In those fifty, the Old Man made me take religion seriously. I'd never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.

The modern concept of separation is an argument for a total separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the acceptance of the doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an influence in civil government.

I have a great deal of religious symbolism in my stories because I have a very deep sense of religion and also I have a religious training. And I suppose you don't say, 'I'm going to have the flowering judas tree stand for betrayal,' but of course it does.