People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

I am radically, insanely, nutty in love with Jesus!

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

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

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?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

And if a person is religious, I think it’s good, it helps you a bit. But if you’re not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

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

God’s mercy and grace give me hope – for myself, and for our world.

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

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

You know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

Theology is unnecessary.

Real Christianity can be summed up in two commands: Love God, and love people.

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.

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.

Start your week off right by getting back to what is really important – honoring God.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

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

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

One of the most important concepts of revealed religion is that of a sacred covenant.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

When Jesus comes to live in our hearts, the seed of holiness is planted.

All in all, I just don’t trust journalists – and I don’t think it’s a good practice for me to trust journalists.

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

When men do not have healthy notions of the Divinity, false ideas supplant them, just as in bad times one uses counterfeit money when there is no good money.

Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

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

Christ was God in human flesh, and He proved it by rising from the dead.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

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.

In this quest to seek and find God in all things, there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good.

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.

When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‚I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,‘ and so forth, I switch off quite early.

The Gospel has never changed.

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

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

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.

Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

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 blind-folded fear.

As a former resident with strong personal and ministry ties to the North Star State, I pray that the good people of Minnesota will show their support for God’s definition of marriage, between a man and a woman.

I don’t let my religious world get too complicated.

There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.