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.

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.

Mediocrity is a path cleared by fear, leveled by apathy and paved by comfort.

Until we meet someday.

It is only the rooms of the present I wish to inhabit.

I think it's never too late to learn - or it's a lesson that's good to continue learning - that you need to treat everyone on a set with respect.

Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It's fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.

Only one thing can stop Luis Suarez from being voted as the Players' Player of the Year... his fellow players.

The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom.

I want to know what you're thinking, you want to know what I'm thinking. But we're alone. In our own minds. We're trapped in this sort of isolation.