Quote

A nation can assume that the addition of the words under God to its pledge of allegiance gives evidence that its citizens actually believe in God whereas all it really proves is that they believe in believing in God

Huston Smith

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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Words
Assuming
Giving
Evidence
Proves
Believe
Prove
Addition
Really
Citizens
Allegiance
Nation
Pledge
Gives
Whereas
Nations
Assume
Actually
Believing

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Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
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I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
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It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.
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We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.
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Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home.
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Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.
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Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.
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As known unknowns become known unknown unknowns proliferate the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
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As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
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My body was born into the - baptized in the Methodist church, and it will be buried in the Methodist Church. Meanwhile, I have a soul. And my soul cannot be confined to any human institution.
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If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it.
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I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.
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Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history.
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We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.
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What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
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The faith I was born into formed me.
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At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.
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Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
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