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" The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them. "
Huston Smith
Ethics
Now
Nature
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" God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. "
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Defined
God
Jesus
" I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication. "
Huston Smith
Practice
Think
Long
" When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones. "
Huston Smith
Truth
Window
Us
" I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be. "
Huston Smith
Up
American
Missionaries
" Science is empirical, all about physical senses that tell us about the world. But physical senses are not the only senses we have. Nobody has ever seen a thought. Nobody has ever seen a feeling. And yet thoughts and feelings are where we live our lives most immediately, and science cannot connect with that. "
Huston Smith
World
Thoughts
Live
" Whether things turn out for the better depends on what we do. We ought not spend our time masterminding the future, but recognize our marching orders: to do the best we can for history and the planet. "
Huston Smith
Future
Best
History
" Science is like a flashlight in the hands of people living in a huge balloon. They can illuminate anything in the balloon, but cannot shine it outside the balloon to see where it is floating - or if it is floating at all. "
Huston Smith
Shine
Hands
Living
" I happen to be a Christian. I was brought up and drenched in that. I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form. "
Huston Smith
Christian
Up
Thinking
" Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet. "
Huston Smith
Truth
Poetry
She
" The Buddha is in me, the Buddha is in you. Live up to it. "
Huston Smith
Buddha
Up
You
" So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues. "
Huston Smith
Look
Back
Justice
" You subtract Christianity from Huston Smith, and there is no Huston Smith left. "
Huston Smith
Smith
Left
Christianity
" Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us. "
Huston Smith
Dark
Woods
Us
" The scientific method is nearly perfect for understanding the physical aspects of our life. But it is a radically limited viewfinder in its inability to offer values, morals and meanings that are at the center of our lives. "
Huston Smith
Understanding
Values
Life
" The faith I was born into formed me. "
Huston Smith
Born
Me
I Was Born
" Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it. "
Huston Smith
Universe
I Am
Vision
" At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome. "
Huston Smith
Ending
Life
Happy
" It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us. "
Huston Smith
Art
Us
Difficulty
" In my town, I had only one adult American male role model: my father. I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be. "
Huston Smith
Father
American
Up
" The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies. "
Huston Smith
Political
World
Organizing
" The Chinese began with the assumption that the group is the fundamental unit of reality. Individuals? Sure, we can factor them out from their groups, but let us not think that they as individuals have any viability apart from their group. "
Huston Smith
Sure
Think
Reality
" Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it. "
Huston Smith
God
Us
Mind
" The faith I was born into formed me. I come from a missionary family - I grew up in China - and in my case, my religious upbringing was positive. Of course, not everyone has this experience. I know many of my students are what I have come to think of as wounded Christians or wounded Jews. "
Huston Smith
Family
Faith
Me
" God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. It's the same in religion. "
Huston Smith
Religion
Thought
God
" I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery. "
Huston Smith
I Am
Truth
Science
" I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death. "
Huston Smith
Me
Death
Fear
" I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations. "
Huston Smith
Spiritual
Launch
God
" First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat. "
Huston Smith
Community
Political
Religion
" The New Age movement looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for belief. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity. "
Huston Smith
Think
See
Good
" Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere. "
Huston Smith
Art
Rules
Drawing