"In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.“

-William Robertson Smith

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"We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit."

-William Robertson Smith

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"Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society."

-William Robertson Smith

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"The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity."

-William Robertson Smith

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"Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged."

-William Robertson Smith

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"Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin."

-William Robertson Smith

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"But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers."

-William Robertson Smith

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"Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race."

-Alfred Russel Wallace

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"Religion is no more the parent of morality than an incubator is the mother of a chicken."

-Lemuel K. Washburn

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"I appreciate the 'Surreal Life.' I had a really positive experience on that show, and with those people. I found some love in my heart for religion again, and had the support of a new family of friends. I wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting those people, if we were not all placed in that fishbowl."

-Vince Neil

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"Contradictory to my religion, I think, is journalism."

-Sydney Schanberg

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"Religion is the idol of the mob it adores everything it does not understand."

-Frederick II

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"When men take pleasure in feeling their minds elevated with strong drink, and so indulge their appetite as to disorder their understandings, neglect their duty as members of a family or civil society, and cast off all regard to religion, their case is much to be pitied."

-John Woolman

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