Cher Quotes

It graduates to 'our state is better than your state', and 'our nation is better than your nation.' And it circles all the way around to where it started: 'Our God is better than your God.'

Islam—like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other religion—is not about peace. Nor is it about war. Every religion is about absolute belief in its own superiority and the divine right to impose its version of truth upon others.

Men whose religion was excessively zealous split themselves into opposing factions, and once divided by a single mistake they disagreed on everything and came to be entirely at odds with one another.

You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.

The great danger... in believing yourself especially chosen is that it becomes easy to view those who are not your people as God's especially unchosen.

They always throw around this term 'the liberal elite.' And I kept thinking to myself about the Christian right. What's more elite than believing that only you will go to heaven?

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

It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different.

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion; the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe.

Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree.

They may not use the word better. But they certainly believe that they'll go to heaven and Jews will not.

Religion is often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have 'God' on its side.

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.

Because we believe that our ethnic group, our society, our political party, our God, is better than your God, we kill each other.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

The fact that President-elect Kennedy would be the first Catholic president did not sit well with many Americans. There was a fear that, as president, Kennedy's decisions would be based on his religion and dictated by the pope.

Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.

A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it

The present crisis in the Islamic world may stem from too many loud and conflicting voices, all claiming religious authority.

I say to you Baptists, "Go on being good Baptists, thinking that you are more right than anybody else." Unless you think it, I have no use for you at all. The Church of England does precisely the same itself.

I would rather reign in a desert than over a country peopled with heretics.

Neither experience nor improvement can root out the inveterate prejudices of the Roman Catholics, or render them less cruel or inexorable to Protestants.

The Moors tolerated Christendom when they were ascendant, but the Christian Inquisition harbored no reciprocal emotion.

There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach — it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.

The liberal use of Christian symbols at community celebrations was an affront to the non-Christian residents, who felt that they could not participate equally and felt less favored.