Benjamin Rush Quotes

Basic religion is the reason we have morals.

Education must establish the moral unity of mankind.

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

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

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.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Religion and morality are critical to how students think about politics and form opinions on political issues.

Nothing has ever moulded our conscience so strongly as our knowledge of what is good and what is evil.

His faith perhaps in some nice tenets might be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was always in the right.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

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

Educate men without religion and you make of them but clever devils.

Religion is the anchor of morality for most people.

Religion to me really means ethical systems.

In vain are Schools, Accademics and universities instituted, if loose Principles and licentious habits are impressed upon Children in their earliest years…How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality and Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn that their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers.

We don't put the Ten Commandments in school anymore. We just neglect everything and people act like the Ten Commandments is something so terrible. I mean, it's a way to live. I think we all could agree on what they say.

My faith dictates a whole lot of what I'll do.

Religion finds the love of happiness and the principles of duty separated in us; and its mission, its masterpiece, is to reunite them.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

One may sigh for all that one loses in giving up the old religion... but the new irreligion is the manlier, honester and simpler thing, and affords a better throry of life and a more solid basis for morality.

Years ago I was on television having a discussion with Billy Graham about atheism. He was saying, even if you're right and I'm wrong, and there's nothing after, I will have had a better life than you, because I do believe there was something. And I couldn't argue with that, even though I wanted to.

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

Whatever efforts one may make, one must revert to the realization that religion is the real basis of morality; religion is the real and perceptible purpose within us, which alone, can turn aside our attention from things. ... The science of morality can no more teach human beings to be honest, in all the magnificence of this word, than geometry can teach one how to draw.

The bottom line is we are trying to do what's right. We don't just say we believe in God - we have active relationships with God.

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.