John Fleming Quotes

I attended the bedside of a friend who was dying in a Dublin hospital. She lived her last hours in a public ward with a television blaring out a football match, all but drowning our final conversation.

You walk into someone's house and they're dying, or they've got a family member who is dying. Your needs are minor; you're there to serve and to advise and to educate. You're not there to provide yourself.

There is good news in the data the strongest support for priests is to be found among the younger generation.

There are so many things in my life that would be completely not on within the conservative church. And yet I think of myself as a reasonably decent human being. With all sorts of flaws, you know, but still reasonably decent. If I did believe in Heaven and Hell, I would really, honestly, believe I was going to go to Heaven.

A chaplain's assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army.

God isn't really interested in our batting averages.

Our need for that exterior god that sits up there and judges us... will diminish and eventually disappear.

By definition, chaplains minister to the spiritual needs of our men and women in armed services, a vital function that an individual without any inclination toward spirituality would not be able to perform.

I'm culturally Jewish but, like most scientists, an atheist: I don't believe there's a God or supernatural world. Buddhism offers guidance on what to do in a world without God: It opines that truly being present in the world‚ experiencing and hanging out with your loved ones, provides all the significance you could want.

Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.

If the bible were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and quotable phrases but there's no plot, no structure, a tremendous amount of filler and the characters are painfully one dimensional. Whatever you do, don't read the bible for a moral code. It advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition and murder. Read it because we need more atheists.

If you don't root for the Dodgers, you might not get into heaven.

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.

He [God] just seems so man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.

Nearly everyone I knew talked to me about God. They always warned me not to offend Him.

I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives... But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all of their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest.

The Holy Scriptures are that divine instrument by which we are taught what to believe, concerning God, ourselves, and all things, and how to please God unto eternal life.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sends forth to you an earnest appeal. Open your doors to the missionaries. Open your minds to the words of God. Open your hearts, even your very souls, to the sound of that still, small voice which testifies of truth.

Becoming a Christian was terribly helpful to me. I can't imagine finding my way without it. I think it can be very crucially important to ally yourself with some religion.

There is no way you can harmonize neo-Darwinism and Christianity.

If you are Catholic, and some other person comes to you seeking guidance, naturally you take him straight away to someone who can show him God's love.

I'm a firm believer in God and I don't think he'd want me acting a certain way.

I think that Bible principles will help anybody.

Let us only take heed that this office of Christ is not set before us in vain. It will profit us nothing at the last day that Jesus was a Shepherd, if during our lifetime, we never heard His voice and followed Him. If we love life, let us join His flock without delay.

The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.