Religious Stories Quotes

This is a particular thing, you know, catholic stories of martyrs who had their head removed and then continued to be miraculous in the last moments of their life.

I do love mythology.

I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

Well, religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. Stories about God, stories about love. Stories about good spirits and evil spirits.

Israel and our vicinity is an area that traditionally has little industry. The area is known for history, it's known for religious stories, it's known a bit for agriculture, but... neither was the Jewish population thinking about export industry, nor the Arab or Palestinian population.

When we stop believing in gods we can start believing in their stories, I retort. There are of course no such things as miracles, but if there were and so tomorrow we woke up to find no more believers on earth, no more devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, why then, sure the beauty of the stories would be a thing we could focus on because they wouldn't be dangerous any more, they would become capable of compelling the only belief that leads to truth, that is, the willing, disbelieving of the reader in a well-told tale.

The only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is “What do these stories mean?

I don't like it when religions take it to the point where they discredit all other religions, because how could one sector of people have figured it out and know that that's it? But I do think that there's so much beauty in a lot of the stories or scriptures.

I can write 100 books on the wisdom and lessons from stories in the Bible.

Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.

As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right.

Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.

I'm interested in mythology generally, but India has no special place in my heart - although Hindu gods seem a lot more fun.