Huston Smith Quotes

You can find a theologian who will spout almost anything.

The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires - and gives rise to - deep feelings of faith.

Various religious systems have been given to humanity at different times, each suited to meet the spiritual needs of the people among whom it was promulgated, and, coming from the same divine source: - God, all religions exhibit similar fundamentals or first principles.

Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations, and where is our religion? We have none.

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

I believe every religion captures a piece of the truth.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees.

The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities.

It is not the Bible that produced religion and morals, but religion and morals that produced the Bible.

The essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law.

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.

My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith.

Christianity began as a religion of the poor and dispossessed - farmers, fishermen, Bedouin shepherds. There's a great lure to that kind of simplicity and rigor - the discipline, the call to action.

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.

We are not against religions. This country is the cradle of prophecy and the true message and we will not contradict this.

It is with this as with religion: one usually believes what he has been taught.

Don't be confused that my interest in religion, faith, and spirituality is driven by any sense of faith or spirituality of my own.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events.

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.

I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion.

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.