Michael Polanyi Quotes

True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.

Jesus made it clear that the most important thing in the world is our relationship to God and to others. When we achieve that, everything good will follow.

The problem I have with all this religion stuff is that I can't relate to it. I think most people got into 'cos it gave them something to do on a Sunday, but since all the shops are now open it isn't required as much.

Religions fulfill deep-seated psychological needs for people, and if you don't get it from a specific religious doctrine, you'll get it from the kind of films I like to make. A film like The Terminator is consciously meant to give a sense of empowerment to the individual.

Faith is not a means to something further. It is not something we do in order to get to heaven. Faith is its own end. To have faith is already to have come alive.

Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture.

Religion is not an end in itself. One's union with God is the ultimate goal.

True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.

Simplicity reaches out after God; purity discovers and enjoys Him.

Life will only make sense; and can only produce long-term happiness, peace and joy when embraced from the perspective of the soul.

Oh! one hour with God infinitely exceeds all the pleasures and delights of this lower world.

Unless men establish their complete happiness in God, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.

If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God, which, I believe, comes through knowing Christ.

God always fills in all hearts all the room which is left Him there.

The experience of bliss can be the purest one of all and therefore the closest to God.

Happiness comes from living the way the Lord wants you to live.

As believers, our joy and peace are not based in doing and achieving, but in believing. Joy and peace come as a result of building our relationship with the Lord.

The heart of man is restless until he finds rest in Thee.

The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to render the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God - and be content to have it so - that is the danger. That some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with the husks and trappings of life - and have really missed life itself.

Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.

You will not find what you want in the world, only in the Father.

Maintaining peace with God is more important than keeping pace with someone else.

To be used of God. Is there anything more encouraging, more fulfilling? Perhaps not, but there is something more basic: to meet with God.

The soul has this proof of divinity: that divine things delight it.