The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.

Conversion is not my intention. Changing religion is not easy. You may develop some kind of confusion or difficulties.

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.

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

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

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

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews – everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

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

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

I don’t think I’ve ever been an agnostic. I’ve always thought there’s a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there’s a world to come.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

I serve God.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‚Thy will be done,‘ and those to whom God says, ‚All right, then, have it your way.‘

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

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.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

Forgiveness is God’s command.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

I am a Christian, and the Bible teaches me to forgive.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

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

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.