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

The only thing that matters is submitting to the will of God.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

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

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.

Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology – absolutely.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

My three children have brought me great joy.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

Indeed, the Lord has not forgotten! He has blessed us and others throughout the world with the Book of Mormon.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

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

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.

We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of women within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

I come from Detroit where it’s rough and I’m not a smooth talker.

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.

I wasn’t allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I’ve ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.

All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents.

I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.

My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

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 am a Catholic, not so committed to the church, but to the idea of the Virgin, the female face of God.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

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

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

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

My wife, a schoolteacher, very disciplined. If you think I’m tough, trust me, and wait till you see when the children are on the naughty step. It’s hilarious. So we decided that I’m going to work like a donkey and provide amazing support for the family.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

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.

It’s true; once you are a father, there’s no turning back. Your heart strings as well as your purse strings are never again the same.

My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time – the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.

God is so big. It’s a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we’re small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

I’ve always wanted a baby.

Treat your children like the blessings they are or don’t have them at all.

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

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.