Interesting quotes:

On topics from: Peace to Religion

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Included are quotes on: peace, pluralism, prayers, prejudice,
purpose, reality, reason, & a link to a list of quotes on religion.

Peace:

	Anon: "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Spotted on a bumper sticker in Syracuse NY.
	Itah Banda, age 8: "Let's peace together our world."
	Mony Dojeiji: "The peace we seek in the world cannot appear until its flame is first lit in our hearts. It is a divine force that whispers gently but insistently, coaxing us ever deeper into the dark recesses of our souls, shedding its healing light and liberating us from our fears. It is a wondrous journey of personal liberation that, for me, continues to this day." Mony Dojeiji & Alberto Agraso González.
	Amelia Earhart: "Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace."
	Ursula Franklin: "Peace is not the absence of war. It is the presence of justice and the absence of fear.
	Mahatma Gandhi: "The pursuit of truth does not permit violence being inflicted on one's opponent." "Be the peace you wish for the world."
	Jagad Guru: "Hatred and conflict are often rooted in differences between people of different races and religions. We all need to respect people of different races as well as people of different faiths and religions. We need to unite by recognizing our common desire and need for a harmonious society -- a society in which we and our children and families and friends and communities can all live our lives in peace and harmony. Regardless of our race or religion, we all want and need such social harmony." "Without respect for people of different races or ethnicities or religions, how can we have a peaceful and harmonious society or world? And without a harmonious society, how can there be the necessary economic development and atmosphere conducive to spiritual happiness and self-realization?" 10
	Thich Nhat Hanh: Buddhist monk and peace activist: "How do you want to create peace, if there is no peace inside yourselves?"
	Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools."
	Kolki: "When religions coexist, leaders communicate, media respect neutrality, laws not blinded by immunity, and citizens' needs take precedence over profitability - peace becomes reality, world lives in harmony." 11
	Hans Küng: "There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions."
	John Lennon: "Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. ..." (From his song "Imagine.") 7 "Make love not war, that's all we're saying, just remember that." "Happiness is a good vibe for peace." "Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace." "Peace in your mind, peace on earth, peace at work, peace at home, peace in the world."
	Golda Meir: "There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel." (It would seem that the reverse is also a precondition to peace.)
	Eve Merriam: "I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask 'Mother, what was war'?"
	Randy Mixter: From his novel "Sarah of the Moon" Page 173: "If you want to end the war, if you want peace on earth, then, by all means, shout it out. Spread the word of peace, but do it in a way that honors those who fight for it."
	Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, addressing the World Evangelical Fellowship on 2001-MAY-04. "Once started, religious strife has a tendency to go on and on, to become permanent feuds. Today we see such intractable inter-religious wars in Northern Ireland, between Jews and Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Hindus and Muslims in South Asia and in many other places. Attempts to bring about peace have failed again and again. Always the extremist elements invoking past injustices, imagined or real, will succeed in torpedoing the peace efforts and bringing about another bout of hostility." 8
	Peter Retzinger: "I believe that love, kindness, compassion, tolerance, and peace can be implanted in the psyche of man only when fear, paranormal illusion and ignorance are removed.  We can then shift our attention more to matters of peace, rather than to matters of war." See his essay on this web site.
	Fr. Oscar Romero: "Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is dynamism. peace is generosity. It is a right and it is a duty."
	Mitra Sen, Canadian teacher, filmmaker, and creator of the Peace Tree: "Let us embrace the beauty of every culture and faith to create peace in our world."
	Joan Walsh, poet: "Peace is the harvest of love as war is the fruit of hate."

Pluralism:

	G.K. Chesterton: "These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own."
	Ramakrishna, a Hindu mystic: "God has made different religions to suit different aspirations, times and countries...one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion."
	Chief Tecumseh of the Six Tribe Confederation: "Trouble no one about their religion, respect all in their views, and demand that they respect yours."
	Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of Reform Judaism's Union of American Hebrew Congregations: "Our view is that there is truth and holiness in other religious faiths. Our view is that there are many paths to God."  He was commenting on a statement by Jim Sibley, head of the Southern Baptists' Mission to the Jews, who said that trust in Jesus is the only way to attain heaven that Jews can have atonement for sin only by this path. 1,2
	Ancient Japanese saying: "There are many paths up the Mountain, but the view of the moon from the top is the same."

Prayers:

	Anon; a Wiccan prayer: "May the Gods always stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk."
	Epicurus, Greek philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE) "If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another."
	Abraham Lincoln, at the time of the Civil War: "I'm driven to my knees by the conviction that I have nowhere else to go."
	The Rev. Bailey Smith, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention: "With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew." Spoken during a talk before 15,000 people at a Religious Roundtable meeting in Dallas TX. The audience responded with enthusiastic applause. 2
	Lily Tomlin: "Why is it that when we talk to God, it's called prayer, but when God talks to us, it's called schizophrenia?"
	Mark Twain: "Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea?"
	Steven Weinberg, in his book: "Dreams of a Final Theory:" "If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers.

Prejudice:

Carl Sagan: "Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us  -- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame flutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir." 9

Purpose:

Anon: "If I can throw a single ray of light across the darkened pathway of another; if I can aid some soul to clearer sight of life and duty, and thus bless my brother or sister; if I can wipe from any human cheek a tear, I shall not have lived my life in vain while here. If I can guide some erring one to truth, inspire within his heart a sense of duty; if I can plant within my soul of rosy youth a sense of right, a love of truth and beauty; if I can teach one person the Goddess is near, I shall not then have lived in vain while here. If from my mind I banish doubt and fear, and keep my life attuned to love and kindness; if I can scatter light and hope and cheer, and help remove the curse of mental blindness; if I can make more joy, more hope, less pain, I shall not have lived and loved in vain. If by life's roadside I can plant a tree, beneath whose shade some wearied head may rest, though I may never share its beauty, I shall yet be truly blest--though no one knows my name, nor drops a flower upon my grave, I shall not have lived in vain while here."

Reality:

	Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626 CE): "The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
	Mike Howerton: "Unless you spend the time it takes to know yourself, you will continue to project your own issues on the people that surround you, or sometimes even the places in which you find yourself." ("Miles to cross", Page 70)
	Tsao Hsueh-chin: "When the unreal is taken for the real, the real becomes unreal."
	Voltaire: "Those who believe absurdities end up committing atrocities"
	One of this website's mottos: "When some people deviate from reality, others are often hurt."

Reason:

	Galileo Galilei: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
	Khalil Gibran: "For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction".
	Goya: "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels."
	George Bernard Shaw: "There is only one religion, although there are a hundred versions of it."
	Jonathan Swift: "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
	Alfred North Whitehead: "We think in generalities, but we live in details."

Religion: See quotes by authors with names starting A to P and quotes by authors Q to Z

References:

1. Bailey Smith was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times, 1994-JUN-26.
2. "Converting a child: Jewish boy caught by Southern Baptists' evangelizing," ABC News, 2000-MAY-12, at: http://abcnews.go.com/
3. Toby Lester, "Oh gods!," Atlantic Monthly, 2002-FEB, at: http://www.theatlantic.com/
4. Steven Weinberg, "Facing Up : Science and Its Cultural Adversaries," Harvard University Press, (2001), Page 242. Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
5. From: Ashlynn's Grove: Pagan Information Resource, at: http://paganism.com/
6. From: Sam Harris: "The end of faith: Religion, terror and the future of reason," W.W. Norton, (2004). Read reviews or order this book
7. On 2005-DEC-08, memorials and remembrances were held world-wide to commemorate the assassination of John Lennon, the former Beatle.  In his hometown of Liverpool, UK, an official memorial service was held at Our Lady and St. Nicholas, the city's Anglican church. Unfortunately, the church refused to allow one of Lennon's best known anthems to peace to be sung -- even though its message is more important and critical today that it was when he was alive. (Consider the religiously-motivated disturbances, mass murders and genocides since 1980 in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Myranmar, etc.) The church did reach an accommodation with the memorial organizers. They allowed the music but not the words to be performed. I wonder if the congregation resisted breaking into unauthorized song as the music was played.
8. Mark Juergensmeyer, "Terror in the mind of God: The global rise in religious violence," University of California Press, (2000). Read reviews and/or order this book
9. Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark."
10. Jagad Guru,"Ancient wisdom," at:  http://www.jagadguruchrisbutler.org/
11. From "Saying of Kolki," at: http://www.kolki.com/

Copyright © 1996 to 2013 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Copyrights for the individual quotations are normally held by their authors
Last updated: 2013-JUL-22
Compiled by: B.A. Robinson

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