Famous Quotes & Sayings

Simone Weil

The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.

Simon Anholt

The real success story of branding in recent decades has been the way in which companies have used their brands to turn the satisfaction of complex and even spiritual needs into commercial transactions.

Thomas Merton

If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.

Thomas Merton

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.

Thomas Merton

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Tony Campolo

Today, some of the most spiritual people I know claim to be without religion.

Rumi

Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.

Rumi

Work on your strong qualities and become resplendent like the ruby. Practice self-denial and accept difficulty. Always see infinite life in letting the self die. Your stoniness will decrease; your ruby nature will grow. The signs of self-existence will leave your body, and ecstasy will take you over.

Rumi

Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul.

James Madison

The characters and events depicted in the damn bible are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

James Madison

In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

Emma Thompson

I'm an atheist. I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qur'an and I refute them.

Emma Goldman

Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.

Emma Goldman

I was called before the head matron, a tall woman with a stolid face. She began taking my pedigree. What religion? was the first question. None, I am an atheist. Atheism is prohibited here. You will have to go to church. I replied that I would do nothing of the kind. I did not believe in anything the Church stood for and, not being a hypocrite, I would not attend.

Emma Goldman

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.

Emma Goldman

I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.

John Hagee

Agnostics cannot understand Christ for the same reason a thief find a policeman -they don't want to.

John F. Kerry

I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an Atheist. We have separation of church and state in the United States of America.

Delta Goodrem

I need to keep traveling, being a gypsy, having experiences and writing about them.

Denis Johnson

Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.

Bobby Farrelly

Writing is very difficult. You have 120 pages of blank paper and it's like, "Go fill that up with some funny stuff," and that's challenging.

Adam Faith

I had a financial page to write in the Mail on Sunday where Id give tips on shares. I worked there for two and a half years. Nothing compares to the burst of energy felt on a newsroom floor when a big story breaks.

Adam Duritz

I think I'd been limiting myself in some ways just writing in first person all the time.

Adam Duritz

You live through stuff, and it affects the way you feel about the world, and you write about it.

Adam Duritz

You aren't really writing about what you did; you're writing about how you feel.

Abraham Pais

Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?

Abraham Verghese

In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.