Hypatia Quotes

... force is the natural ally of superstition, and superstition knows it well.

Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.

God save us from religion.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

The fewer dogmas, the fewer disputes; the fewer disputes, the fewer miseries

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars

Religion was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were taught in all the other classes.

I personally am not religious. I think, put into the wrong hands, it's incredibly dangerous. It's the reason for most of the wars that have been fought around the world, and it's pretty ridiculous when you think about what they're actually arguing over.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.

Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself who has declared war against Almighty God.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

In the forefront of science, there is not much difference between religion and science. People harbor beliefs. That's what happens when people believe something religiously.

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

Religion is a strange, wonderful thing. More crimes have been committed in the name of righteousness than any other notion.