Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they deny somehow that God has a feminine face. However, if you go to the holy texts, you see there is this feminine presence.

I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world!

The best way to know God is to love many things.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

If you’ve lost your spirit, even living in the richest country in the world can’t help you become rich.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

I have too many clothes, I have too many options.

God always takes the simplest way.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.

The truth is lived, not taught.

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

Only God who made us can touch us and change us and save us from ourselves.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

Even more amazing than modern technology is our opportunity to access information directly from Heaven, without hardware, software, or monthly service fees.