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

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" 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. "

" The faith I was born into formed me. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different. "

" 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. "

" You subtract Christianity from Huston Smith, and there is no Huston Smith left. "

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

" The Buddha is in me, the Buddha is in you. Live up to it. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There are wonderfully intrinsic moments when life makes sense, and doubts are banished as irrelevant in those moments. Of course, we can't stay in that state. We're not here to be blissed out all the time. "

" I had assumed that Bush's seemingly inflexible policy to support Sharon was for political reasons of his getting elected. But as to whether he really believes his actions are going to hasten the day of the final conflict, I do not know. "

" 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. "

" The most powerful moral influence is example. "