Peter L. Berger Quotes

My family for several generations have been members of the Unitarian Church.

Now, you can't tell me, we have the only God in the whole world. You can't tell me that nobody else has God.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin.

Everyone - whether it's the Jews, the Greeks, the Catholics - everybody is entitled to religious beliefs and entitled to their traditions.

It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.

The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.

There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.

There's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Qur'an, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bible, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bhaghavad Gita, or of the Book of Mormon, or of the other sacred texts of many of those religions.

Apparently Pope John Paul II and his boys - is that what you call them? - loved one of my songs and thought I was putting spiritual messages in my music. I'm not religious as such. Dogma and I don't get along.

I think most non-Christians who try to be good people are probably better Christians than Christians.

Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass.

While the world may be dramatizing, the Scientologists are out there, making the “Saints of yesteryear”, look like little children

The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

We in the United States are pluralistic respecting ultimate beliefs. Profound values exist apart from a devotion to a god.

The Religion which you profess is an obstacle to the exercise of your consular functions.

The American intelligentsia has been pretty secular for a long time. There have always been figures like Oprah Winfrey, let's put it that way.

A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents.

I was raised in a community of Christian orthodoxy that had traveled with my parents to Los Angeles when they moved there for my father's job.

Jesus is the most normal Christian in the Bible.

I love religion. I could make up religions all day. I sort of think that in an ideal world I'd like to be a religion designer. I'd like people come up to me and say, I need a religion. I'd go talk to them for a while, and I'd design a religion for them. That would be a great job. There's a need for people like that. Fortunately, seeing that one can't actually do it, I get paid for sort of making them up anyway.

Congress is going to start tinkering with the Ten Commandments just as soon as they find someone in Washington who has read them.

There are many concepts of spirituality, among them, various notions of divinity developed in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religions. Within these the concepts vary greatly.

Religions are maintained by people. People who can't get laid, because sex is the first great earthly pleasure. But if you can't get that, power is a pretty good second one. And that's what religion gives to people. Power. Power is sex for people who can't get or don't want or aren't any good at sex itself.

There are religions and social and moral awareness in any society that gets passed immediately. Those human truths. All cultures address them.

The moral foundation of the society, the way we interact with each other is more fundamental than the Supreme Court.