Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

I think I have a big fear of things spiraling out of control. Out of control and dangerous and reckless and thoughtless scares me, because people get hurt.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Seeing is not always believing.

To the man who reads ‚Scouting for Boys‘ superficially, there is a disappointing lack of religion in the book. But to him who tries it in practice, the basic religion underlying it soon becomes apparent.

‚Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

I serve God.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

God doesn’t dwell in the wooden, stony or earthen idols. His abode is in our feelings, our thoughts.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

The ‚public‘ scares me, but people I trust.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

There’s a long way to fall when you pretend that you’re so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Study men, not historians.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

Do I think faith will be an important part of being a good president? Yes, I do.

I still get very scared when I step in front of a live audience.