"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."
---One of my heroes, Thomas Paine
I think that many of you might misinterpret this quote as being anti-religion, but I don't think it is so much anti-religion as pro-education. Also, Thomas Paine wasn't anti-religion, he was a fairly religious man but he was against organized religion. He wrote at the beginning of the Age of Reason(one of his books) a quote that it is very very close to my own religious beliefs.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe
----Thomas Paine, The Age Of Reason
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It's not often I come across a set of religious beliefs that I wholeheartedly love. I don't even wholeheartedly love my own religious beliefs. This is pretty much as close as it can come.
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