Jean Houston Quotes

I was raised in a Baptist household, went to a Catholic church, lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and had the biggest crush on the Muslim girls from one neighborhood over.

There is a great interest in comparative religion and a desire to understand faiths other than our own and even to experiment with exotic cults.

I was a young woman who had grown up in the mountains of Montana as a Protestant Methodist in a pretty good social gospel tradition. I became fascinated with the religious lives of others who seemed also to be very religious, yet in ways that were quite different from my own. That fascination led to relationships, in India and elsewhere, with families of Hindus, of Muslims, of Sikhs, and a lot of study.

I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.

Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that.

I like to read about different religions - Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.

We are the meeting place, an entity that's trying to connect faith and culture.

There's this great fear, and I find, lack of knowledge of Catholicism, just like I'm ignorant of other things. I think we should all visit each other's places of worship and get to know a priest, get to know a rabbi. It's not that scary. I think Scientology is scary, and I don't understand Jehovah's Witnesses, but I haven't spent time with them.

Scientology is not written with disrespect toward God. It doesn't worship something that is evil. It is scientific, mathematical, and spiritual. The black community has to check it out and see what's there. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but you have to take a look.

Hopefully the presence in Congress of an American who happens to be Hindu will increase America's understanding of India as well as India's understanding of America.

My father is an atheist. My mother is Buddhist. They encouraged my siblings and me to take the best part of other religions to make our own belief system.

I wasn't brought up with any religion at all. At school and in my early 20s, I read every religious text I could get my hands on - Buddhist scriptures, Hindu texts, the Qur'an, and the Bible. I wanted to feel like something made sense to me, that there was something sacred I could feel aligned with.

Right after college, after growing up in the United States, I moved to India, broadly telling the story of how an old and stagnant country was suddenly waking up. And I came home, back to America, in 2009 after telling that story and writing a book about that.

I was a curious child. I'd debate with anyone who came to the door - people from the Islamic community... Jehovah's Witnesses... anyone.

I am a believer in god, but I have not restricted myself to one religion. I have experienced many religions.

There are many cases and layers of racist behavior in the US - from police treatment to the issues of education and job opportunities. In America, however, such cases are being discussed publically.

I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)

I have no quarrel with what I learned in the Presbyterian church - I am still an enthusiastic Christian. But why shouldn't I try to learn more? Why shouldn't I go to Hindu services? Why shouldn't I go to Muslim services? If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more.

If people invited Muslims into their home every week by way of a TV show would go a long way to making people feel comfortable with Muslims and countering misconceptions about who we are. Plus, of course, that will make it easier for us to impose sharia law across America.

We cannot avoid the globalization of knowledge and information. When I was a boy growing up in Kansas, I could never think about a Buddhist, or a Hindu, or Muslim, or even a Protestant - I grew up in such a Catholic ghetto. That's not possible anymore, unless you live in a cave or something. So either we have knowledge of what the other religions and other denominations are saying, and how they tie into the common thread, or we end up just being dangerously ignorant of other people and therefore prejudiced.

Dalai Lama is very interested in learning from and sharing tips with people in other traditions, but he always stresses that we shouldn't underestimate the important differences between them.

I have excellent relationships with Jewish organizations and participate every year in a Hanukkah celebration with my family. There haven't been any anti-Semitic tendencies in my team for a long time.

I have tried reading the Bible but that's a tough read there. I watch a lot of religious documentaries. I have a keen interest in religion for someone who's not religious.

...conversation can be as mutually incomprehensible as foreign languages. We need the different and complementary perspectives of the various yogas - and ideally of all religions - not only to reach God but to reach each other.

I think it's important to focus on our economy, on jobs, on getting America back to work.