Sandra Bernhard Quotes

Theology is endlessly interesting in that you can study it without believing in anything. I do believe, but you don't have to. I got very caught up in the 11th-century monasticism and the Cistercians. My dissertation was about Aelred of Rievaulx and one of his books.

As a Jew, I recognize the importance of Israel historically, liturgically: its place in our history and in our sacred texts. I fully recognize and appreciate that. I just think that, for me, a sole focus on Israel gets in the way of the pursuit of a relationship with God and a more spiritual existence within Judaism.

Love is the essence of all religion, mysticism, and philosophy, and for the one who has learned this, love fulfills the purpose of religion, ethics, and philosophy, and the lover is raised above all diversities of faiths and beliefs.

Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.

Mystery is the essence of divinity

I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about.

Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.

I'm Jewish, not Catholic, but I'm a spiritual person.

I believe in spirituality, which is out there.

I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.

Most assuredly Zen is a religion, but it is a religion without scripture, without doctrine or dogma and without sin.

That's my feeling - that real God and religion are two different things and that religion is trying to obscure what God really is.

Jews talk a lot about God. But actually their god, just like Marx said, is money. Cash!

I tell my mother I went to God in spite of my religious education. I feel that my religious education was inadequate, but that doesn't mean that Judaism was inadequate.

Suffering predisposes the mind to devoutness; and most young girls, prompted by instinctive tenderness, lean towards mysticism, the obscurer side of religion.

The rule of love, I say again, is not an optional extra. It is the very essence of what we [Christians] are about

Where mystery begins religion ends.

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate Truth only in silence and Love.

Christianity is not a "spiritual" religion, like some religions of the east. It is an intensely "practical" religion, having its moral roots in the practicality of judaism. It was not designed to change the way men think or believe as much as to change the way they act.

There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God.

Christianity isn't all that complicated ... it's Jesus.

I don't think there is any incompatibility between science and mysticism . . . Immanent religion is the only form of religion in which there is no conflict at all, that I can see, between science and religion.

Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of.

He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.