Quotes

 

Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts.

~  Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Islamic Fatwa on Terrorism, 2010

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Christianity began as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When it went to Athens, it became a philosophy. When it went to Rome, it became an organization. When it went to Europe, it became a culture. When it came to America, it became a business.

~ author unknown

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Ironically, the traits that are the hallmark of  psychopaths -
ruthlessness, risk-taking,  deceit – are increasingly valued in today’s
“aggressive” world of commerce and industry.

~ Robert Matthews, UK science writer

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Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

~ Augustine of Hippo, 415, The Literal Meaning of Genesis

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 It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. 

~ Sir Edmund Hillary, NZ Explorer

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You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth… Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~ Kahlil Gibran, poet and writer 1883-1931
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Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Bohemian poet
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A perfect market free to operate without government interference certainly sounds good, but it is little more than a fantasy held up to distract policymakers while lenders rake in profits from those who never quite figure out the terms in fine print.

~ Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke ( With Surprising Solutions That Will Change Our Children’s Futures )

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Each night a child is born is a holy night.

~ Sophia Blanche Lyon Fahs, Unitarian Universalist missionary

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People think pleasing God is all God care about.  But any fool living in the
world can see it always trying to please us back. 

~Alice Walker, The Color  Purple 

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Never give in… never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.  Never yield to force… never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. 

~ Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during WW2

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True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.

~ Albert Einstein, 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

~ Margaret Mead, anthropologist & writer

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In America, when somebody comes for your neighbor, or his Bible, or his Torah, or his atheist manifesto, or his Qur’an, you and I do what our fathers did, and our grandmothers did, and our founders did- you and I speak up.

~ Keith Olbermann, reporter & writer

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We can not do great things.  We can only do little things with great love.

~Mother Teresa

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O mother earth, kindly set me down upon a well-founded place!

~ from the Atharvaveda

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There can be no religion but social religion. There can be no holiness but social holiness.

~ John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Movement, UK 18 th century

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Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

~ Pope John Paul II

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

~ Carl Sagan, scientist and writer

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Reverend Lovejoy: Ned, have you considered any of the other major religions? They’re all pretty much the same.
~ ‘The Simpsons’
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Some theologians have called on Christians to construct their theology in a deliberately “syncretistic” fashion; to reappropriate old symbols in wholly new ways, ways suited to the values and needs of postmodern culture. Such a process is not seen as a rejection of Christianity, but a development of it, a moving of Christianity forward into the twenty-first century.

~ Robert Stockman, A Resource Guide for the
Scholarly Study of the Bahá’í Faith

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For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail? 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19 th century US philosopher and writer

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When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we’re going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don’t come suddenly.
~ Sue Monk Kidd, US writer
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The whole purpose of mainstream TV is to get you to buy things- not to entertain you or teach you or make you feel you belong, but to get you to spend money.

~ from Possum Living by Dolly Freed and David Gates

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One who walks in the search of knowledge walks in the path of God.

~ Muhammed

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God has no religion.
~ attributed to various sources

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Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of
spirituality.
~Carl Sagan, US scientist and writer
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Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.
~Voltaire, 18 th century French philosopher
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We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
~ Jonathan Swift, 17 th century Anglo-Irish writer and politician
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To different minds, the same world is a hell and a heaven.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendental philosopher & writer
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I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

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The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.
~ Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
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I’m more spiritual than I am religious. I don’t go to church; I go to the beach.
~ Paula Deen, US writer and chef
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‘Go that way’ does not mean you go alone; go means we go together.
~ Mozambique proverb
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When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
~ Sinclair Lewis, American Nobel Literature Prize winner
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I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer God than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible Gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
~ Stephen F Roberts
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Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
~ Karl Marx, Criticism of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”
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Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through
understanding.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war any more.
~ Bible, Isaiah II:4
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My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
~ Bishop Desmond Tutu, South African Civil Rights Activist
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit
a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
~Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the US
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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the
interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one
another, and all involved in one another.
~Thomas Merton
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I would like the church to be a place where the questions of people are
honored rather than a place where we have all the answers. The church has to
get out of propaganda. The future will involve us in more interfaith
dialogue. … We cannot say “we have the only truth.”
~Bishop John Shelby Spong
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Fear is our shared lovelessness, our individual and collective hells. It’s a world that seems to press on us from within and without, giving constant false testimony to the meaninglessness of love.
~ Excerpt from ‘A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles’, Marianne Williamson
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The Messiah complex is the will, intention, compulsion to be a messiah, to be the redeemer and savior of the world. A Messianic complex is not just the general wish – be it overt or covert – to redeem the world or to improve the conditions of the world, but it includes another component just as important. The messianic wish is not merely a general wish for improved conditions and for changes for the better, but the wish of that private person to become personally the redeemer of the world.
~ Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael (Steinsaltz ) author & Jewish philosopher
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You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.
~Medgar Evers, Civil Rights Worker assasinated age 37
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We are not sinful, shameful human creatures who have to somehow earn Spirituality.  We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.
~ Robert Burney ‘Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls’
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When we abandon the field of religious discourse—when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome—others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
~ Barack Obama, US President
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Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
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All religion seems to need to prove that it’s the only truth. And that’s where it turns demonic. Because that’s when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.
~ John Shelby Spong, Episcopal Bishop, writer
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A God understood, a God comprehended, is no God
~ Gerhard Tersteegen
German reformed mystic 1697- 1769
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I am not a Hindu,
Nor a Muslim am I!
I am this body, a play
Of five elements; a drama
Of the spirit dancing
With joy and sorrow.
~ Kabīra, 15 th century Indian poet
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We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
~ Joseph Campbell, Author
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‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again.
‘Mankind was my business.
The common welfare was my business;
charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.
The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water
in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’  ( Jacob Marley )
~ Charles Dickens, Victorian writer, A Christmas Carol
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Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees
~Victor Hugo
19 th century French writer & human rights campaigner
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The glory of God is man fully alive…
~Irenaeus, 2nd century bishop in France
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Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. 

~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

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It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world.  The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. 

~ Baha’u'llah

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The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. 

~ Wesley Henderson, writer

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Reason is our soul’s left hand, Faith her right. 

~ John Donne, English poet
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Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. 

~ John Muir, whose conservation work preserved Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park in the U.S.

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Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.
~ Qur’an 2: 62
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For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
~Acts 20: 29-30, Bible
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God Himself is the Forgiver.
~ Guru Gobind Singh, 17 th century Sikh philosopher
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Whatever is happening is The One.
~Adyashanti, non-dual writer and teacher
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The Jews started it all—and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and aetheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings … we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives…
~Thomas Cahill, writer
‘The Gifts Of The Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels’
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Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
~ Rabindranath Tagore
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I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence.
~ Doug Macleod, US musician & writer
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Where speech will not succeed, it is better to be silent.
~ Sikh proverb
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He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

~ Jesus

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There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there’s bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.

~Karen Armstrong, theologian & writer
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The thing is this journey has taken me to places where others do not always want to go. While so many of my friends have encouraged me with the ideas of this book there are others who find this kind of thinking (and the conclusions I suggest) as scary and threatening.A friend of mine put it this way: “You are simply asking questions and raising issues that there are no easy answer for, so I am afraid you will lead people to a place they cannot recover from.”
~ Doug Pagitt, author of A Christianity Worth Believing

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Last Word:

I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. 

~ artist, Vincent van Gogh