Religion Quotes by George Santayana

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

— George Santayana

“The worship of power is an old religion.”

— George Santayana

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

— George Santayana

Fear first created the gods.

— George Santayana

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

— George Santayana

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

— George Santayana

Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.

— George Santayana

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.

— George Santayana

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

— George Santayana

We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.

— George Santayana

For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.

— George Santayana

“faith in the intellect...is the only faith yet sanctioned by its fruits”

— George Santayana

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.

— George Santayana

Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.

— George Santayana

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy…

— George Santayana

Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old…

— George Santayana

Spirituality lies in regarding existence merely as a vehicle for contemplation, and contemplation merely a vehicle for joy.

— George Santayana

Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's fine…

— George Santayana

Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all…

— George Santayana

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying…

— George Santayana

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the…

— George Santayana

The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine… If we dramatize its life and conceive…

— George Santayana

Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly…

— George Santayana

Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall…

— George Santayana

It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given…

— George Santayana

Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the…

— George Santayana

Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall…

— George Santayana

An operation that eventually kills may be technically successful, and the man may die cured; and so a description of religion thatshowed…

— George Santayana

Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds…

— George Santayana

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with…

— George Santayana

Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds…

— George Santayana

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

— George Santayana

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

— George Santayana

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

— George Santayana

The true Christian is in all countries a pilgrim and a stranger.

— George Santayana

We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.

— George Santayana

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

— George Santayana

To drink in the spirit of a place you should be not only alone but unhurried.

— George Santayana

What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not…

— George Santayana

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any…

— George Santayana