Michael J. Knowles Quotes

Cultures, along with the religions that shape and nurture them, are value systems, sets of traditions and habits clustered around one or several languages, producing meaning: for the self, for the here and now, for the community, for life.

Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me.

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

Culture is a reflection of values.

I love traditions. I mean, cultural ones.

Religion, in any form, is always interesting to me because of how powerful it is. Not even the religion itself, but to the people that follow it... The effect that it has had on people's minds.

A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws …

Growing up Mormon, you learn how to be very, very organized, and it's a passionate group. I mean, in that way, it's prepared me very well for Hollywood.

What does culture mean? It's not a physical thing. I love a museum, but that, for me, doesn't make you a better person.

[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms, by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

Religion is so much more than the god you pray to. The religion that you associate with, it's culture, it is family, it is background. That is something that I have always grown up with.

I think the world would be much poorer without religion, speaking generally.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

I'm not a religious person, and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion, but I do like having some sort of communal gathering, and having some sense of peoples.

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Culture is the intersection of people and life itself. It's how we deal with life, love, death, birth, disappointment... all of that is expressed in culture.

It's one thing to be religious, but it's another thing to make religion your policy.

Religion and morality are critical to how students think about politics and form opinions on political issues.

I do have rituals. I'm a fairly superstitious person.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.