Well, I’ll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

The most powerful idea that’s entered the world in the last few thousand years – the idea of grace – is the reason I would like to be a Christian.

He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.

I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something.

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

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

I don’t do any vulgar movements.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‚believe in God‘ and ‚don’t give up‘ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

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.

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.

Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

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.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

I don’t call myself a Buddhist. I’m a free spirit. I believe I’m here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that’s my religion.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

New York is definitely ready for the word of God.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

I am a just man.

The only thing that matters is submitting to the will of God.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

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

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

Despite the slowness, the infidelity, the errors and sins it committed and might still commit against its members, the Church, trust me, has no other meaning and goal but to live and witness Jesus.

I am a Catholic because I choose to be a Catholic. And then I go to the Mass because I choose. It is out of my free will.

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.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.