The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

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.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

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.

On the whole, we think of our consumers – other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing.

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

The word ‚God‘ usually signifies ‚Lord‘, but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.

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

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

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

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

What really matters is how God sees me. He isn’t concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man’s soul.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

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.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.

The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

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.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

Oh, hour of forgiven sin, moment of perfect pardon, our soul shall never forget you while, within you, life and being find immortality!

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

One of my major keys is actually the master keys: God.

Clinicians, academicians, and politicians are often put to a test of faith. In pursuit of their goals, will their religion show or will it be hidden? Are they tied back to God or to man?

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.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

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

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.

After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

I try to speak in a way that people can understand.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Being brought up very religious, I have a fear of people that look to idol gods.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.