religion

"That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion."

"I felt an overwhelming gratitude in my life right now and wanted a chance to acknowledge it. I felt that any thanks given to any god all went to the same place, anyway, no matter what religion you were centered in."

"We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome."

"The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to."

"When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die."

"A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking."

"Religion isn't the opium of the people, it's the hypocrisy."

"An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it."

"If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect."

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.[Letter to William Bradford Jr. April 1 1774]"

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

"We are the Bibles the world is reading; We are the creeds the world is needing; We are the sermons the world is heeding."

"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but i laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."

"I’ve often wondered why the Protestant Reformation took place in Germany, rather than in Poland. Then I realize that Luther had to nail his 95 theses to the church door, and the Poles didn’t know how to operate a hammer."

"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee."

"We need to eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, religion, and nationality. Every human requires food and water to survive and every human has a heart that bleeds, loves, and grieves."

"In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him."

"I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it... I'm not agnostic. Just nonpartisan. Theological Switzerland, that's me."

"A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?"

"So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name.The problem’s name is God."