Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

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.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

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

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

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.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

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

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

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

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily… thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn’t always follow what was going on.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10.

Only the educated are free.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

We’re not like robots. God promises to guide us through the Holy Spirit, but He gives us the freedom to make our own decisions.