A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect – if you’re a moderate on abortion, if you’re a moderate on gun control, or if you’re a moderate in your religious faith – it doesn’t evolve into a crusade where you’re either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

I am not promising that God will give you everything you want. There are times when we want things that God knows would not be good for us.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people’s hope.

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.

When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn’t believe in.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.

Conversion is not my intention. Changing religion is not easy. You may develop some kind of confusion or difficulties.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Beto’s copy of the Bill of Rights goes from one to three. Mine includes the Second Amendment. But there are a whole host of people here in Washington… they would be happy to confiscate America’s guns. And if you don’t believe that, then you probably also still believe in Bigfoot.

Conversion is a change of masters. Will we not do as much for our new master, the Lord Jesus, as we did once for our old tyrant lusts?

If you want to live in the fullness of God’s anointing, fill your mouth with His Word.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

The ways of the Lord are different from the ways of man. Man’s ways remove people from office or business when they grow old or become disabled. But man’s ways are not and never will be the Lord’s ways.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

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.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

I don’t let my religious world get too complicated.

Politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

You better take care of me Lord, if you don’t you’re gonna have me on your hands.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

I deal with more practical issues of the Bible.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

The gods‘ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.

Anyone who is to find Christ must first find the church. How could anyone know where Christ is and what faith is in him unless he knew where his believers are?

Being brought up very religious, I have a fear of people that look to idol gods.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‚security,‘ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists – they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.

If you’d have said Evangelical in 1957, most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. And then, they’d be against it.

Each time we cooperate with God, we take one more giant step forward. Because when God asks us to change, it means that He always has something better to give us – more freedom, greater joy, and greater blessings.

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

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

To feel not only submitted but willing to be anything or nothing as the Lord wills it – this is, in truth, to sing a song to our Well Beloved.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

God is everywhere.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.