Daniel Dennett Quotes

I am thankful that all the people in the world who absolutely, positively, know what God wants, usually kill mostly each other.

More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, that is true perversion.

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

In the Middle East, Iraq, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world, religion has been so divisive that people have killed one another, believing they were doing the work of God.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.

The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion.

When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.

There are fundamentalist psychopaths in every religion in the world. Every single one.

This fanaticism is what feeds terrorism. And this is precisely why Muslims must play an active role in opposing hate sermons and incitement to terrorism and extremism in their mosques.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

Over the course of history many religions have fallen victim to violent interpretations.

We’re not fighting for Christianity but against human fanaticism of all kinds.

Those who committed yesterday's crime, which will have a painful impact on the peaceful nature of our nation, are not only the suicide bombers, but also everyone who instigated or justified the attacks, everyone who called them mujahedeen, even everyone who ignored this irregular direction in our religion and nature, or tried to find excuses for it

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

The biggest danger of this terrorism and extremism is the tarnishing of the reputation of our beloved religion... We will not allow this to happen.

In the past, most wars were motivated by the idea of nationhood. Today, however, wars are incited above all using religion as an excuse.

I don't like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy... this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law... and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics!

Organized, yeah. And those who are so sure that their God is the right God that they believe it's ok to kill another person who doesn't believe in their God.

In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms.

I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.