Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.

Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.

The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.

eorum omnium actiones in se invicem

The son needs the father to have access to his source, and the father needs the son to have access to the future and the infinite.

You need to understand that some comedy can have consequences.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

Our prime purpose in life is to serve others.

Thought precedes action, action does not always precede thought.

I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him

Our thoughts, our feelings, our dreams, our ideas, are physical in the universe.

Racism is a cancer that America does not want to cure.