- “For all those who say its a Man world. Respect Women Its their World we are just guest here” ― Abhishek Shukla, KISS Life “Life is what you make it”
- “I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence…You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story’s factuality…[rather] to a story’s causality – whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions.” ― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
- “Being conscious of where I am going─not just physically but how the destination and reaching it impacts thought and physicality─draws out a more meaningful existence.” ― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, The Magic of Nature: Meditations & Spells to Find Your Inner Voice
- “These days, people of all religions and sects have this thought process in common: “God is with me because my heart and intentions are pure. Yes, my head is messy but my heart is pure. Yes, I did this and that but my intentions were not wrong.” If everybody is so pure and pious, why is there so much pain and misery in this world?” ― Shunya
- “It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place–because we become better people in it.” ― Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
- “I’ve never had much use for religion, except when it comes to swearing or begging for mercy.” ― Mark Lawrence, The Wheel of Osheim
- “Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.” ― Martin Buber
- “As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for ‘mind’ or ‘intellect,’ and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over ‘exile’ or ‘return.’ It’s everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the ‘messianic’ Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir
- “In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The object was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, the ultimate and inexpressible reality beyond human understanding. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable. The challenger, drawing on his immense erudition, began the process by asking an enigmatic question and his opponents had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present – not in the ingenious verbal declarations but in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech. Nearly all religious traditions have devised their own versions of this exercise. It was not a frustrating experience; the finale can, perhaps, be compared to the moment at the end of the symphony, when there is a full and pregnant beat of silence in the concert hall before the applause begins. The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence.” ― Karen Armstrong, The Case for God
- “Religion poisons everything” ― Christopher Hitchens
- “I have taken all my good deeds and all my bad deeds, and cast them … in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both, and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace!” ― David Dickson
- “The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.” ― Ray Bradbury, The October Country
- “Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all—the rest, to a man, are fools and eluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn’t; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn’t; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn’t; one man knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren’t; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn’t so.” ― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
- “Ia kembali teringat nasihat kiai Lukman saat masih di pesantren dulu, “Eling-Elingo yo Ngger, endahe wanojo iku sing dadi jalaran batale toponing poro santri lan satrio agung” ― Habiburrahman El Shirazy, Bumi Cinta
- “We believe that religions are basically the same…they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.” ― Steve Turner, Up To Date
- “Vin paused. “And you have all of these religions memorized?””As much as is possible,” Sazed said. “Their prayers, their beliefs, their mythologies. Many are very similar — break-offs or sects of one another.””Even still, how can you remember all of that?””I have…methods,” Sazed said.”But, what’s the point?”Sazed frowned. “The answer should be obvious, I think. People are valuable, Mistress Vin, and so–therefore–are their beliefs.” ― Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
- “Sometimes even a “Yes” can be fatal for our Souls” ― Abhishek Shukla, The Reflection “Success or Stress”Choose Wisely
- “Doctrines, no matter which path of human endeavor they come from, must serve the humans, not the humans serving the doctrines. “Love thy neighbor” – is a great doctrine, but more importantly, it is an unparalleled piece of magnificent human teaching – as such, whoever practices it, becomes a better human, a real human. On the other hand, there is another doctrine that says “God may purify the believers and destroy the disbelievers” – now would you, as a real conscientious human being, consider this one as a great beneficial doctrine or teaching for humanity? Far from being great, doctrines like this are the ones that compel the human society to forget its innate humanism.” ― Abhijit Naskar, Principia Humanitas
- “That’s the funny thing about religion: it doesn’t matter what you say, you’re going to upset someone. ” ― Lewis Black, Me of Little Faith
- “If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.” ― Criss Jami, Healology
- “London is one of the world’s centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; ‘Islamophobic’ to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm.” ― Nick Cohen
- “the only unfailing guide I’ve ever found through the innumerable blind alleys of my life as a writer, man, husband, father, citizen, steward, or believer, is the love burning in my heart. for me, prayer is about one thing: making contact with that love. though it burns in there like a candle flame, hot, bright, beautiful, love’s flame is so fragile… keeping one’s love burning, and living in accord with that burning: this, to me, is prayer.” ― David James Duncan, God Laughs & Plays; Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right
- “God’s gifts put men’s best dreams to shame.” ― Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- “On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
- “Every interaction is an opportunity to learn, Only if we are interested in improving rather than proving.” ― Abhishek Shukla, Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1
- “If you uncover yourself and find who you are, the universe will also uncover itself before you, If you try to forcefully uncover the universe without uncovering yourself, you will meet endless layers after layers of planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, dark matter and what not!” ― Shunya
- “Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.” ― Mercedes Lackey, Changes
- “I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.” ― George Carlin
- “It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.” ― George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
- “Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist ape – a theoretical pest from the stone-age, that somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect.” ― Abhijit Naskar, Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality