Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.

R. Buckminster Fuller

God, that dumping ground of our dreams.

Jean Rostand

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky, who watches everything you do. . . . And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke . . . where he will send you to live and suffer and burn . . . until the end of time. But he loves you.

George Carlin

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.

Ambrose Bierce

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.

Denis Diderot

Arguing whether or not a God exists is like fleas arguing whether or not the dog exists. Arguing over the correct name of God is like fleas arguing over the name of the dog. And arguing over whose notion of God is correct is like fleas arguing over who owns the dog.

Robert Fulghum

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.

Joseph Campbell

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.

Mark Twain

There are some forms of religion that are bad; just as there’s bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.

Karen Armstrong

It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

I’ve been hiding from God, and I’m appalled to find how easy it is.

Mignon McLaughlin

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.

Richard Burton

We must free ourselves to be filled by God. Even God cannot fill what is full.

Mother Teresa

Let God speak, here and now, plain and honest and once and for all, or forever hold His peace. Enough of this muttering in the distance, that awkward blundering behind the scenes. Come on out, whatever You are, show me Your face, kiss me, embrace me, enslave me in bliss. Or else shut up.

Edward Abbey

For many years I would make a light in my heart while in meditation. I did variations on this, too. I would go and sit in the sunlight and imagine myself surrounded by sunlight. . . . I made the image of light in my heart as an image of God’s love. The only way I can describe what happened is that it stopped being an image. Something asserted itself through that image as if it were love.

Robert Corin Morris

There is no worldly reward for our spiritual efforts. There isn’t even a connection. The payoff for turning to God is more God, not more world.

Hugh Prather

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

Annie Dillard

God is closer to us, the mystics say, than our breath. Closer than we are to ourselves. St. John of the Cross says, “We are in God like a stone is in the earth . . . already in the Center.” There is no way to get any closer to God than we already are. The spiritual life, then, is not about actually coming closer to God but rather the realization of the communion and union that already exists, and always has, and always will, forever.

Gerald May

That you need God more than anything, you know at all times in your heart. But don’t you know also that God needs you — in the fullness of his eternity, you?

Martin Buber