Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.

I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.

Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

He that has not religion to govern his morality, is not a dram better than my mastiff-dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, and do not pinch him, he will play with you as finely as may be, he is a very good moral mastiff; but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face, and tear out your throat.

Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

Morality may exist in an atheist without any religion, and in a theist with a religion quite unspiritual.

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Religion is one of the most important forces in the world. Whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, or a Hindu, religion is a great force, and it can help one have command of one's own morality, one's own behavior, and one's own attitude.

All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

There has to be some kind of order and some moral code. I don't know how people can function without a belief in a deity.

Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology.

I just believe if you don't believe in God, then where is your moral barometer? That's just me talking. You can believe what you want to believe.

Faith is part of who I am, yes. I was raised Christian Scientist. The most important thing I saw every single week on the wall at Sunday school was the Golden Rule.

Religion can be both good and bad - it is spirituality that counts.

I think it's imperative to have faith or religion, because it's good to have morals, to be kind to others.

There is nothing specific we have to believe in order to have moral and spiritual lives.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

Religion is the anchor of morality for most people.

The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.