Steven Weinberg Quotes

The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

The preachers are the greatest problem in the United States of America.

All religions are both harmful and untrue.

I find that religion really does motivate people to do horrible things because they have this passionate faith in whatever their religion happens to be, and it teaches them that the other religion is the wrong one.

I'm not a follower of this or that religious leader. More wars are started because of religious leaders, and people are following and they don't know why... That is religiosity. That is what turns people into robots.

Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.

But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, & more than enough of it - Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a religioso turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart?

Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

How many evils have flowed from religion.

Religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things.

Religion has been a curse on the world and humanity will never know freedom until this curse has been exorcised. It is the curse of ignorance, which has cast its dark shadow over thousands of years of human suppression.

In every religion, there are those who would drape themselves in the mantle of belief and faith only to distort it's most sacred teachings - preaching intolerance and resorting to violence.

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?

What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God - and I hope you'll quote me on that.

Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.

Moderates want their faith respected. They don't want faith itself criticized, and yet faith itself is what is bringing us all this - this lunacy.

If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.

No one must use the name of God to commit violence. To kill in the name of God is a grave sacrilege. To discriminate in the name of God is inhuman.

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell.

I don't mind most religious people, I talk to them. I listen to them, you know, banging on. "I prayed very hard and then the fairy came." "Did he? Good. Have a biscuit." I only get annoyed when they try and make me see the fairy. "You have to let the fairy into your heart." Look, I wouldn't let him into my garden, okay? I'd shoot him on sight, if he existed, which he doesn't. Now have another biccie and be quiet, will you please?

Religion has failed us. Christ was not a Christian. Buddha was not a Buddhist. Mohammed was not a Mohammedan. And yet ever since the dawn of history, we have engaged in conflict and war and terrorism and murder and racism and ethnocentrism and bigotry and prejudice in the name of God.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.