The study of the traditions doesn't necessarily make you want to convert to another tradition, but it helps you to see your own differently and expands your outlook.

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.

What we perceive about ourselves is greatly a reflection of how we will end up living our lives.

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.

I was so tired of the parts I had to play. There seems little for me in Hollywood, because, rather than real Chinese, producers prefer Hungarians, Mexicans, American Indians for Chinese roles.

If the work of art is good enough, it must not be criticized for its theme. I don't think it can be argued.

One must laugh and weep, love, work, enjoy and suffer, in short vibrate as much as possible in all his being.

Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned - not to see what is not.

Misfortune is no excuse for cruelty.

And it seems to me in that experience may lie at least some of the clues for policy development perhaps constitutional changes as well that Labour will need to make at the national level too.

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.

Most bands, if something goes wrong, they cower and walk off stage and fire people.