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

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Commodities such as gold and silver have a world market that transcends national borders, politics, religions, and race. A person may not like someone else’s religion, but he’ll accept his gold.

To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

God always wants us to be growing.

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.

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

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

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!

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

The truth is lived, not taught.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.

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.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Worshipping the Lord means giving Him the place that he must have; worshipping the Lord means stating, believing – not only by our words – that He alone truly guides our lives; worshipping the Lord means that we are convinced before Him that He is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

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

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

‚God‘ is a relative word and has a respect to servants, and ‚Deity‘ is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.