It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed (Aquinas).

The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.

You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

You don't get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don't know.

Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker

The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.

The "good old times"-all times when old are good.

My favorite hotel is the Villa Alilla in Bali. The setting is pure bliss, overlooking the ocean of Uluwatu; the eye line makes you feel as if you're floating on top of the ocean.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

Gifted leadership occurs when heart and head--feeling and thought--meet. These are the two winds that allow a leader to soar.

A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

My mother never let on that anything was wrong. She kept her chin up and acted as if everything were just fine. So we did too.

Success is deciding from the start what end result you want and creating the circumstances to realize that result.

The more history I read, the more everything seems to point to the same thing.

Men who could willingly resign the luxuries and sensual pleasures of a large fortune cannot consent to live without the grandeur and the homage.

People equated burning CDs with theft. That's not what burning CDs is. Theft is about acquiring the music from the Internet.