Emile Durkheim Quotes

So multiverse or not, we still have to come to terms with the origin of the laws of nature. And the only viable explanation here is the divine Mind.

From What-is all the world of things was born But What-is sprang in turn from What-is-not.

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

In some socialist states well-performed work is rewarded with moral stimulants instead of material ones. However, the moral stimulants cannot be explained by materialistic philosophy. It is the same case with the appeals for humanism, justice, equality, freedom, human rights, and so forth, which are all of religious origin. Certainly, everybody has the right to live as he thinks best, including the right not to be consistent with his own pattern. Still, to understand the world correctly, it is important to know the true origin of meaning and of the ideas ruling the world.

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.

To say that the universe exists is silly, because it says that the universe is one of the things in the universe. So there's something wrong with questions like, "What caused the Universe to exist?"

I have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach that Gandhi is advocating.

The Big Bang has made Idealists out of almost anybody who thinks. First there was absolutely nothing, then Bang! Something. This is beyond weird. Out of sheerest Emptiness, manifestation arises.

The world is my representation

As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!

The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

There are but two truths in the world - the Bible and Greek architecture.

The world could be anything, you know, It could be a solid state matrix of some sort. It could be an illusion. It could be a dream. I mean it really could be a dream.

The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole.

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.

All religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination, and are not disposed that men should reason upon them.

Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.

I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and he answered, I am not He, but He made me.

Yin and Yang control man's actions, and both extremes are a natural reaction.

In the beginning of time, light drew out matter along with itself into a mass as great as the fabric of the world.

A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case. If, as I hold, there is no good reason to believe that a god either created or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition that such a thing exists.