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" The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules. "

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" I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form. "

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" Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us. "

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade. "

" 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. "

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" God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. "

" In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives. "

" I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith. "

" 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. "

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" I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be. "

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" The faith I was born into formed me. "

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" It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us. "

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" Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times. "

" In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be. "

" Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self. "

" Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them. "

" 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. "

" No one in human history has given as much thought to the interweaving of altered states of consciousness and religion as I have. "

" 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. "

" It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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" 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. "