Top 1200 Religious Art Quotes & Sayings

All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.

Government sponsorship of religious activity, including prayer services, sacred symbols, religious festivals, and the like, tends to secularize the religious activity rather than make government more ethical or religious.

It was then that my religious consciousness emerged to flower years afterward into definite forms of religious dancing in which there is no sense of division between spirit and flesh, religion and art.

It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity.

I'm very religious, you know. Now, OK, if by 'religious', you mean that I go to church every Sunday, read the bible faithfully, and I listen to Debbie Boone, umm, I'm not religious in that sense... But if by 'religious' you mean that I love others and try to help them whenever possible... Again, no. But if by 'religious' you mean that I like to eat coleslaw... Yeah, OK, OK!

Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.

When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world. All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject.

I live in a country where 90 or 95 percent of the people profess to be religious, and maybe they are religious, though my experience of religion suggests that very few people are actually religious in more than a conventional sense.

Every religious group, while perhaps a majority somewhere, is also inevitably a minority somewhere else. Thus, religious organizations should and do show tolerance toward members of other religious denominations.

Modern science developed in the context of western religious thought, was nurtured in universities first established for religious reasons, and owes some of its greatest discoveries and advances to scientists who themselves were deeply religious.

I'm a New Yorker. I'm liberal and open-minded. Things don't really shock me. But I was reading the second-act today and thinking that if you're religious, you could be. But you shouldn't be! You can be extremely religious and have your faith and still be open-minded to art. Because this is art. That's part of the excitement. It literally is "The Jerry Springer Show" on-stage set to beautiful operatic music. That's what's so incredible about it!

To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.

Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made.

As a matter of history great developments in art have often been remarkably separate from religious motivation and use.

No, I'm not religious, I'm sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious." "No time. Does it need time to be religious?" "Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can't be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Odéon Bar and all that.

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

Graphic design is a popular art and a practical art, an applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art of visualizing ideas.

We have a religious renaissance today in America, as many people say. I would say this religious renaissance, ninety percent of it is the greatest danger true religious experience has ever been confronted with.

And the fifteenth century was an impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of art that it consecrated everything with which art had to ad as a religious object.

I am aware that I preach a religious doctrine understood and accepted by a very small part of the religious world, when I point out the relation of the religious concept to physical fitness.

The Artist should not forget his mission, perhaps the most religious of all, of sustaining faith in the worthwhileness of art and thus of life.

The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion - others pray in church. It's a banality, but you don't possess art, it possesses you. It's like falling in love.

Warhol and other Pop artists had brought the art religion of art for art's sake to an end. If art was only business, then rock expressed that transcendental, religious yearning for communal, nonmarket esthetic feeling that official art denied. For a time during the seventies, rock culture became the religion of the avant-garde art world.

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful

The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise

True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it.

Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.

All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.

I started to write religious music at a time when it was absolutely impossible. The first religious work I wrote was the 'Psalms of David,' when I was still a student in 1957... At that time, religious music was really forbidden.

Wherever there is a religious regime, over there there is ignorance, misery and absurdity! No religious state can ever elevate its own people! Sooner or later, the primitiveness of the religious administrations and the irrationality of the religious rules will cause a great collapse of those countries! The downfall is inevitable!

All art worthy of the name is religious.

You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.

There are always forces at work in a society, certainly in America, which are really forces of censorship -either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film. And all art is fundamentally subversive, because it upsets people's perceptions, their notions about society. Therefore, art is dangerous, but good art is always making us reassess our thoughts and feelings about how we relate to other people. There are always people who fear that and want to suppress that.

There are times when the art world seems like a religious empire. There are great cathedral galleries and pilgrimage sites where treasured art pieces are displayed like holy relics, and this can certainly be a great pleasure on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Has it led you to the conclusion that photography is an art ? Or it is simply a means of recording ? "I'm glad you asked that. I've been wanting to say this for years. Is cooking an art ? Is talking an art ? Is even painting an art ? It is artfulness that makes art, not the medium itself. Of course photography is an art - when it is in the hands of artists."

Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art.

Secularism is not only indifferent to alternative religious systems, but as a religious ideology it is opposed to any other religious systems. It is therefore a closed system.

Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.

I think it is appropriate that we pay tribute to this great constitutional principle which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution: the principle of religious independence, of religious liberty, of religious freedom.

To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’... You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love... My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word.

I had abandoned Catholicism, but even during my short militant atheist period I maintained an interest in western religious art and music.

While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.

God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth

Burzum is not a political or religious band, or even an anti-religious band. Burzum is music - art if you like - and the interpretation of art lies in the eye of the beholder.

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.

Andy was a nonverbal person; you couldn't get directions out of him. All he knew was what was modern in art was what wasn't art: The telephone was art, the pizza was art, but what was hanging on walls in museums wasn't art.

Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered?

The word spirit comes from the Latin word for "breath" - spiritu - and the origin of the word spirituality has to do with breath and life force, the mysteries of the ancients and all this. The word is very suspect in much of the art world - the Western art world. Certainly, spirituality has become divorced from religious.

Everyone talks about religious liberty, but no one believes it. So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.

Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. ... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster.

The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects.

I really do think that art can save you in some sense. It's the last meaning, unless you're religious-and I'm not religious. It's the only secular vehicle for transcendence we have. It's an immediate self-validating experience. It lifts you beyond your mortal clay.

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.

A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it - the element of the sacred.

But it is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you ... it leads you to pay religious honor and worship to images and pictures.