Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.

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.

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.

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.

Every victory contains the germ of future defeat.

In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.

Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open.

When you get into individual characters certainly there's been things that have been updated .

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

No use in waiting, we can all work hard to bring about changes.

The stuff I find attractive in women I always regret finding attractive. I always like a kind of madness in a woman... I like it when they hate me right from the beginning.

I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.

Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia.

Those who won't take a chance don't have a chance.