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.

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 Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I’m actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

My mom is very religious – Catholic – and from a young age they brought me to the church.

Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of ‚I know.‘ Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

There’s always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science, and I will just ignore them, as I’m only acting and communicating on the science.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

We live in a bewildering world.

Things won’t get better dwelling on the past. Accept what has happened. Then move forward.

Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything.

I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

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.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities.

I’m not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it’s almost like we’re living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it’s like a big reality show.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

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.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

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.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.

Allah’s the Arabic term for God. Stand up for God, fight for God, work for God and do the right thing, and go the right way, things will end up in your corner.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.