I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things – he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‚darkness‘ on the walls of his cell.

I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.

I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me govern my conduct. And the first time I was very much afraid.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we’re doing.

I describe myself as a simple Buddhist monk. No more, no less.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

With all due respect, I am against dumb.

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence.

I’ve had faith my whole life that there was someone looking out for me, a spirit guide, a soul guide.

Even more amazing than modern technology is our opportunity to access information directly from Heaven, without hardware, software, or monthly service fees.

I believe that the primary role of the government is to protect people and not run their lives. You used to be able to believe that in the Democratic Party.

Open-minded people tend to be interested in Buddhism because Buddha urged people to investigate things – he didn’t just command them to believe.

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.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

If we are not free, no one will respect us.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‚I’m not interested,‘ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

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

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

I tell you the groans of the damned in hell are the deep bass of the universal anthem of praise that shall ascend to the throne of my God for ever and ever.

I am simply trying to struggle through life; trying to do God’s bidding.

Was Jesus the son of God? Yes. But so are you. You just haven’t realized it yet.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

I was born on a full moon. Both my children were born on full moons, too. Some people say that’s scary. It is what it is, man, I don’t be trippin‘. I couldn’t tell God when I wanted to be born.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

We should pass the U.N.’s Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. At least it will clearly establish whom you view as a terrorist and whom you don’t. We need to delink terrorism from religion – to isolate terrorists who use this interchange of arguments between terrorism and religion.

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.