All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race – racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic – what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

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

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

There are many, many Christians who practice Buddhism, and they become better and better Christians all the time.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that’s – those are humbling times, you know?

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Except for the title ‚father,‘ there is no title, including ‚vice president,‘ that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don’t have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don’t adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

The last thing the devil wants you to do is be an obedient Christian.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‚Thy will be done,‘ and those to whom God says, ‚All right, then, have it your way.‘

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it’s not religion, but you can train through education.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don’t think God categorizes sins.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‚What’s in it for me?‘

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

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

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

You know, my faith is one that admits some doubt.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.