Thomas Keating Quotes

Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.

Once started religious strife has a tendency to go on and on, to become permanent feuds.

The Catholics and Protestants … are occupied in nothing but cutting each other’s throats.

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

No nations are more warlike than those which profess Christianity.

Organized religion is good for wars, battles, pissin' and moanin' and not much else.

How is it possible for people in the modern world to go on killing each other for religion? The problems we should be concerned with nowadays are quite different!

I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

All the Abrahamic faiths are marked by violence.

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.

To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.

Religion a stalking horse to shoot other foul.

In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also, thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed.

It is said that peace is the basic tenet of all religion. Yet it is in the name of religion that there has been so much disturbance, bloodshed and persecution. It is indeed a pity that even at the close of the twentieth century we've had to witness such atrocities because of religion. Flying the flag of religion has always proved the easiest way to crush to nothingness human beings as well as the spirit of humanity.

I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world.

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.

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

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

Wars have always started over religion.

If Pakistan becomes an imminent reality, we shall be heading straight for bloodshed on a wide scale. Non-Muslims ... are not bluffing, they will not submit peacefully to a Government that is labeled 'Muhammadan Raj'.

Religions number in their ledgers more murders than the bloodiest tyrannies account for

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.

We came down on them like a flood! We went out among their cities! We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!

… fight idolaters wherever you may find them; take them and besiege them, and waylay them at every outpost.