Bertrand Russell Quotes

It has always worried me that certain men of the Church have not understood that torture is never humane or Christian.

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

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

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

No religion can be built on force.

Is it really true that religion makes people more kindly, generous, or loving? History tends to disprove this. The worst wars, the most vicious Inquisitions, the cruelest pogroms and persecutions, were both fomented and supported by religion.

In politics, as in religion, it so happens, that we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those that deny the whole of it; since if Servetus had been a Mohammedan, he would not have been burnt by Calvin.

No nations are more warlike than those which profess Christianity.

I have found that the greatest stories of acceptance and love and the ugliest stories of hideous cruelty and abuse have equally been perpetrated in the name of Christian faith.

And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm.

Let us pray for the many Christians in the world who still suffer persecution and violence. May God grant them the courage of fidelity.

The principle of the Inquisition was murderous. . . . The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.

Organized, yeah. And those who are so sure that their God is the right God that they believe it's ok to kill another person who doesn't believe in their God.

I have been judged vehemently suspect of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the sun in the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the earth is not at the center of same, and that it does move. Wishing however, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. (Quoted in Shea and Artigas 194)

Those who believe in their truth -- the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men -- leave the earth behind them strewn with corpses. Religions number in their ledgers more murders than the bloodiest tyrannies account for, and those whom humanity has called divine far surpass the most conscientious murderers in their thirst for slaughter.

No wild beasts are so cruel as the Christians in their dealings with each other

I'm not a dogmatic Christian and I don't believe in the Bible literally, but I realized that Jesus is basically a very Zen dude.

The more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs.

My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.

Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man. We'll kill men, but we want to save mankind. And that isn't right, your Reverence. The world will be an evil place as long as people don't believe in other people.

And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

I do believe that Christians - I don't identify as a Christian. I believe in God.

I believe Jesus Christ came for everybody. I don't think he came for Christians. The Bible says take this good news to the whole world.

There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.