Idries Shah Quotes

I'm very interested in religion and different religions, and I know quite a lot about it. I love gospel music, and I love going to churches, but the one drawback is that I don't actually believe in God. And it is quite a handicap, you know.

The thing that intrigues me about Matthew is that I don't believe anybody would read it if they aren't Jewish and understand it. And so to say that publicly as a Christian is kind of interesting.

Our pluralist society must provide its citizens with the tools to understand religions, their symbols and their practices.

I'll watch things on OWN like 'Belief,' which is about faith.

The best way to understand another person's religion is to listen to the story of what particular practices helped them to deepen and to embody their religion, especially its spirituality.

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

It is important to not be hostile to what a greater part of society has embraced, whether as Christians, Hindus or Muslims. It is important to respect that because whether you believe or not in the existence of a superior being, humanity does believe in that.

I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it. I love the parts I love so much, but I find a lot of it just appalling. When a right-wing person quotes a passage in order to attack and stigmatize another person--or group of people--I just roll my eyes.

I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it.

Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical.

Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.

The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.

Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.

All religious beliefs seem weird to people not brought up in them.

One sees a trend in our political and legal cultures toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies that there is something wrong with religious devotion.

I like the fact that people come together who have shared values, but I don't believe that a man died 2,000 years ago and was crucified on a cross to save me from my original sin.

I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.

I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity.

Many liberals believe in God; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.

Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism.

You start talking about God and a lot of people are going to become very defensive.

The Holy Scriptures are that divine instrument by which we are taught what to believe, concerning God, ourselves, and all things, and how to please God unto eternal life.