I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

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.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

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

My mom is very religious – Catholic – and from a young age they brought me to the church.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Don’t be misled by those who claim God doesn’t exist, because He does.

Mormonism is a little different, but I still see them as brothers in Christ.

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

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesn’t believe that, about other possibilities?

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.

We must show our Christian colors if we are to be true to Jesus Christ.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

God always wants us to be growing.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

I’ve grown accustomed to hotels and drastic climate change.

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

Well, we can’t say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Despite the slowness, the infidelity, the errors and sins it committed and might still commit against its members, the Church, trust me, has no other meaning and goal but to live and witness Jesus.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

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.

Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

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

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, ‚Be still, and know that I am God.‘ But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don’t need to carry it around with you after you’ve crossed the river.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

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

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Instead of judging people, we need to pray.