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.

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.

This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths.

In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin.

The land of a god corresponds with the land of his worshipers.

That the God-man died for his people, and that His death is their life, is an idea which was in some degree foreshadowed by the older mystical sacrifices.

This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis... only of that force of precedent which in all times has been so strong to keep alive religious forms of which the original meaning is lost.

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.

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.

The god can no more exist without his people than the nation without its god.

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.

But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches.

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

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.

The god, it would appear, was frequently thought of as the physical progenitor or first father of his people.

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.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper no one cared what he believed about its origin.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

Some gods may cross your path, but why should gods be beautiful? They could also be frightening.

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.

So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.

There may or may not be a God or gods; the Siblings do not concern themselves with proving or disproving such a thing. By definition, gods are more powerful than men, and thus quite able to fend for themselves without help.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

I saw my parents as gods whose every wish must be obeyed or I would suffer the penalty of anguish and guilt.

Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

In the last fifty years science has advanced more than in the 2,000 previous years and given mankind greater powers over the forces of nature than the ancients ascribed to their gods.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

The gods loves to punish whatever is greater than the rest.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.

Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods.

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.

When men make gods, there is no God!

Therefore, if the gods are immortal and eternal, what need is there of the other sex, when they themselves do not require succession, since they are always about to exist?