Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alan Lightman

For me, spirituality includes the belief in things larger than ourselves, an appreciation of nature and beauty, a sensitivity to the world, a feeling of shared connection with other living things, a desire to help people less fortunate than ourselves. All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.

Alan Lightman

I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

Alan Lightman

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

Al Franken

My spiritual life is... sometimes I have access to it and sometimes I don't. When I do have access to it, it's usually a sense of my understanding what the best course of action or the best thing for me to do. By best, I mean when I have a real sense of doing the right thing and doing good for people and the connected universe of everybody.

Al Gore

Sri Chinmoy was a once in a lifetime spiritual leader who touched the lives of millions of people through his teachings, art, athletics, and music. He was a student of peace and he embodied peace. Sri Chinmoy was a great man and his life's work significantly helped to build world harmony and will continue to do so.

Al Gore

Those who are quick to feel disrespected often have a spiritual vacuum in their lives, because they feel disconnected to the love of their Father in Heaven.

Al Gore

The spiritual sense of our place in nature... can be traced to the origins of human civilization... The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity.

Al Gore

The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.

Al Gore

The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual... what other word describes the collection of values and assumptions that determine our basic understanding of how we fit into the universe?

Charles R. Swindoll

You want to mess up the minds of your children? Here's how - guaranteed! Rear them in a legalistic, tight context of external religion, where performance is more important than reality. Fake your faith. Sneak around and pretend your spirituality. Train your children to do the same. Embrace a long list of do's and don'ts publicly but hypocritically practice them privately... yet never own up to the fact that its hypocrisy. Act one way but live another. And you can count on it - emotional and spiritual damage will occur.

Charles R. Swindoll

In place of our exhaustion and spiritual fatigue, God will give us rest. All He asks is that we come to Him...that we spend a while thinking about Him, meditating on Him, talking to Him, listening in silence, occupying ourselves with Him - totally and thoroughly lost in the hiding place of His presence.

Charles Colson

Seventy-six percent of the American people say we have a spiritual problem in our country. That's great, because now they understand the root of the problem is not that we haven't passed enough laws; rather, the root of the problem is in terms of our social value system.

Charles Colson

... a widespread secularization increasingly descends into a moral, intellectual, and spiritual nihilism that denies not only the One who is the Truth but the very idea of truth itself.

Barry Goldwater

Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand,— in the name of a concern for “human beings”— regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society.

Antonio Machado

By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind sees the path

Bruce Lee

By adopting a certain physical posture, a resonant chord is struck in spirit.

Brooks Atkinson

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

Brother Lawrence

The most holy and important practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God - that is, every moment to take great pleasure that God is with you

Brother Lawrence

We should fix ourselves firmly in the presence of God by conversing all the time with Him...we should feed our soul with a lofty conception of God and from that derive great joy in being his. We should put life in our faith. We should give ourselves utterly to God in pure abandonment, in temporal and spiritual matters alike, and find contentment in the doing of His will,whether he takes us through sufferings or consolations.

Brother Lawrence

That we ought to give ourselves up to GOD, with regard both to things temporal and spiritual, and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of His will, whether He lead us by suffering or by consolation, for all would be equal to a soul truly resigned

Brother Lawrence

Having found in many books different methods of going to GOD, and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly GOD'S. This made me resolve to give the all for the all; so after having given myself wholly to GOD, that He might take away my sin, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world.

Brother Lawrence

The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "God" with the wrong blocks.

Edward Young

The spirit walks of every day deceased.

Edmund Husserl

In all the areas within which the spiritual life of humanity is at work, the historical epoch wherein fate has placed us is an epoch of stupendous happenings.

Eckhart Tolle

You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.

Eckhart Tolle

If increased meta-knowledge is not counter-balanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness then the likelihood of psycho-spiritual dysfunction is great.

Eckhart Tolle

Although all spiritual teachings originate from the same Source, once they become verbalized and written down they are obviously no more than a collection of words-and a word is nothing more than a signpost....

Eckhart Tolle

When the ego dominates in organizations, even spiritual organizations, there is usually a big drama or upheaval of some kind, and self-destruction begins.

Eckhart Tolle

This is why very often you find educated people in the media who look at spiritual books but they are so identified with their thought process, they don't get it. They write reviews or articles and they miss the whole point. They can't see the essence. It's not their fault; it's not them personally. It's the human condition and its mind-identified state. And intelligence in itself doesn't help. You can have two or three Ph.D.s; it doesn't get you any closer to spiritual realization. In fact, you might be more distant.

Eckhart Tolle

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have.

Eckhart Tolle

Words that arise spontaneously out of the state of presence are charged with spiritual power: the power to awaken.

Eckhart Tolle

If the only teacher you have is your suffering, you will need a substantial dose of it for the ego to dissolve. But if the power of spiritual teaching is already at work, then a minor event can dissolve the ego.