religion Quotes

At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.

When I was writing 'The Satanic Verses,' if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.

It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way.

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

In Britain, Christianity is dying. Islam, unfortunately, isn't.

If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.