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.

I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion but it is a civilization bent on destroying ours.

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement in the overwhelming virtue of diversity these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.

I have increasingly over the years felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.

It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

Well right now I'm very fascinated with 1920s Berlin. I mean probably the more interesting thing would be to go to the beginning of civilization or precivilization - like polytheistic times. It would be interesting to see what came before modern religion and culture - what circumstances created the environment or the need for it.

The major civilizing force in the world is not religion it is sex.

Human rights is a universal standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.