Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

Western Humanism does not ask the fundamental questions about the meaning and limits of personal experience. Humsniists leave aside the mysteries of contingency and transitoriness, for the certainties of research, production, consumption.

I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.

'Why are we here?' 'What is our purpose? 'Is there an afterlife?' 'Is there a God?' 'Is it all about science?' Those are big questions, and usually, TV is a little scared to go there.

Every religion implies that it treats the problem of being and nonbeing, life and death. Their languages are different, but they speak about the same things.

If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

How we come to be, and how we are what we are, is beyond any understanding. I have been obsessed by this, trying to understand the very nature of my existence.

I feel like that religions generally ask the biggest questions. They may not always have the best answers, but they're the zone of human activity that regularly asks the biggest questions.

I went to medical school because I wanted to ask the big questions. Do we have a soul? Does God exist? What happens after death?

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

If you cannot render me a reason how I came hither, and what I am, I must go to those who will render me one. And if that craving be not satisfied by a rational theory of life, it will demand satisfaction from some magical theory;

Doing Good Is My Religion

There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their lives, who didn't know... why the sun always rose over the mountains.

I wouldn't say I'm a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.

No study has taken so much of human energy, whether in times past or present, as the study of the soul, of God, and of human destiny.

I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life.

About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.

I grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don't believe something I can't have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it's funny, people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and they go to church.

He who has art and science also has religion, but those who do not have them better have religion.

The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.