I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.

What I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

The Lord has often chosen to instruct His people in their times of trial.

I do know this: God does answer your prayers, but it’s not always in the way you expect. God knows what’s best for us, though, so there’s no need to worry when things don’t go how we originally wanted them to go.

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

I think that is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.

Nature is not human hearted.

Prayer is such a basic foundation of a Christian’s relationship with God. It’s how we communicate and fellowship with Him. But a surprising number of people, young and old, new and even long-time Christians, say they’re not satisfied with their prayer life.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the constitution of India. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

Honoring the priesthood fosters respect, respect promotes reverence, and reverence invites revelation.

I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

It’s one thing to be religious, but it’s another thing to make religion your policy.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

A faithful woman can become a devoted daughter of God – more concerned with being righteous than with being selfish, more anxious to exercise compassion than to exercise dominion, more committed to integrity than to notoriety. And she knows of her own infinite worth.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

Being is the great explainer.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Why am I here? I’m not lucky. That’s God.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

I have to be seen to be believed.

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them.

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.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

All those who believe in psychokinesis – raise my hand.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.