Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross. It cannot remain its own self except by identifying itself ever more intensely with the essence of the Cross.

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.

I answer only to God.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

All religions have been made by men.

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

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 essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

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.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

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

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, ‚Be still, and know that I am God.‘ But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don’t need to carry it around with you after you’ve crossed the river.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

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

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

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.

Christians are not limited to any church.

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.

You cannot mix sports with politics.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon, must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

The Bible is clear – God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

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.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

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.

To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.

To be is to do.

If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it’s not religion, but you can train through education.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.