Religion is interesting because it brings out the best and the worst in humanity. It can be a source of good deeds whether it's people from different spiritual backgrounds coming together to help other people in need after a crisis. But it's also a cause for war and bloodshed.

Religion you can't a handle on it you just have to know or not know-people either believe or they don't believe.

Religion was used as an ideology as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.

Basically fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

Think about all the great leaders. Think about Obama. Think about Clinton. Think about Nelson Mandela. Think about all the people that we know who are very successful in business in politics and religion. What are they? They tell purposeful stories. They move people to action by aiming at the heart.

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.

The Muslims have as everyone else says the right to practice their religion and they have the right to construct a mosque at ground zero if they wish. What I am saying though is that they should listen to public opinion they should listen to the deep wounds and anguish that this is causing to so many good people.

The more you get into any religion it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people and how you get out of this 'I me mine' type of thing.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

Billions of people don't practice a religion at all.

There's a generation of people I think without a strong connection to family to religion to civic duty. They have a real disassociation from the problems of the world.

I found it interesting that as people become more technically oriented all over the world at the same time people are becoming increasingly spiritual. The success of the Da Vinci code - even though it was a great yawn - also showed people's interest in religion.

For many people religion can be so easy they stumble right over it.

I am fascinated with religion or things that people believe in and question that. I think it's interesting.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone because it says 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

It's fun being in Islamic countries to know there's only one religion. There's order. You wear a burqa. There's no choice. People are happy with that.

People here argue about religion interminably but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.

I'm not a religious person and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion but I do like having some sort of communal gathering and having some sense of peoples.

I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.

Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.

I do explicitly see Jewish people as a people - not either a religion or an ethnicity but a people.

No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

Every week I get letters from people worldwide who feel that the possibilian point of view represents their understanding better than either religion or neo-atheism.