Miriam Defensor-Santiago Quotes

The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive - a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will.

I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion.

Once you have somebody that is telling you, 'We are interpreting God for you,' it seems like you either agree or you don't. You either say, like Martin Luther, 'I'm going to have a direct relationship with the word of God,' or I'm going to go through a conduit of God on Earth,' which would be the Pope.

Mike Huckabee and indeed many of the Christian conservatives in the U.S. have far more in common with the Muslim Brotherhood than they'd like to admit, in that all of them very much want to see a role of religion in society.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

When religious leaders get involved in elections, it is usually with a reactionary social agenda.

I’m very worried about the religious right. I don’t believe in mixing religion and politics. They do a disservice to religion and to politics.

We will not compromise with any infidel....Islam is the truth and all else is falsehood.

[Spanish] unreasoning religious ardor culminated in the Inquisition, established for the purpose of securing the supreme good of unblemished purity and uniformity of belief. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of this, and no sacrifice was deemed too great for its accomplishment. All officials, from the king downward, were sworn to its support, and the sinister influence which it exercised was proportioned to the enormous power which it wielded.

We were given the Scriptures to humble us into realizing that God is right, and the rest of us are just guessing.

Fundamentalist religion is the most pervasive vision of central planning, though many fundamentalists may oppose human central planning as a usurpation or "playing God.This is consistent with the fundamentalist vision of an unconstrained God and a highly constrained man.

Once a ruler becomes religious, it becomes impossible for you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell.

There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment's notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject

All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that most of it will be caused by religion. I count Prohibition as a part of religion, for it has surely become so in the United States. The Prohibitionists, seeing all their other arguments destroyed by the logic of events, have fallen back upon the mystical doctrine that God is somehow on their side, and that opposing them thus takes on the character of blasphemy.

It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity. St. Paul, who was the first to speak to the Gentiles, the pagans, to believers in other religions, was the first to teach us that.

Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.

I hate religion. I think it's a neurological disorder.

God is not pre or post anything. He is present to everything. ... There is not predestination but destination, not predestiny but destiny. This follows from divine omniscience and eternity.

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

In reality, the monotheist texts preach neither peace, love nor tolerance. They are texts of hate.

I think enormous harm is done by religion - not just in the name of religion, but actually by religion. ... Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.

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.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.

Religion is not a nice thing. It is potentially a very dangerous thing because it involves a heady complex of emotions, desires, yearnings and fears.

Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.