I care not if God is on my side; my constant hope and prayer is that I may be found on the Lord's side.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
The only life worth living is a life lived for others.
I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos!
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
Pray, verb: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Do not stand in a place of danger trusting in miracles.
Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach.
People may doubt what you say, but they will always believe what you do.
Don't judge a man's wealth, or his piety by his appearance on Sunday.
Think of these things, whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account.
The work of building up Zion is in every sense a practical work; it is not a mere theory. A theoretical religion amounts to very little real good or advantage to any person.
If you love the truth you can remember it.
If one man can conquer in one battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquer himself, he (the later) is the greatest of conquerers.
Any attempt to reduce that fuller sense of religious freedom, which has been part of our history in this country for more than two centuries, to a private reality of worship and individual conscience so long as you don't make anyone else unhappy, is not in our tradition...It was the tradition of the Soviet Union.
Why should God manifest himself in such subtle and debatable ways when he can make his presence completely unambiguous?
Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe. I mean the real universe. All those light-years. All those worlds. I think of the scope of the universe, the opportunities it affords the Creator, and it takes my breath away.
Wherever a discrepancy seems to exist, either a scientist or a theologian - maybe both - hasn't been doing his job.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
Our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. [That is because] there is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.
The safest road to hell is the gradual one, the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
“Dark matter” and “dark energy” cannot be seen but only indirectly detected, and we don’t really know what they are. None of this proves that God exists, obviously, but it surely encourages humility.
The problem is, living off approval and applause, and deriving your sense of self-worth from the praise of others, may feel great, but it also produces great problems. When it comes to being worshipped, human beings just don't make very good gods, something the Good Book warns about repeatedly. Worship is meant for God alone. But when humans are idolized and worshipped – and when they lower themselves to accept that homage and bask in its glory – major conflict mysteriously appears within the idolized star.
To repent just means you simply look honestly in the mirror and see your own flaws and weaknesses and don't make excuses for them, don't deny them, blame someone else for them or justify them.
Douthat, one of the only religious (as in believing in and practicing a religion) columnists at The New York Times, added, “The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs: a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,’ and a piping-hot apocalypse.”
Everyone on the left and right cares about the environment. But caring about the environment is not the same as environmentalism. Environmentalism, for most of its adherents, is a secular religion. These people, many of whom refer to, and truly regard, the Earth as a goddess (Gaia, the name of the ancient Greek Earth goddess) worship the environment.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat described the 2009 James Cameron blockbuster film, “Avatar,” as “Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism, a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.” That equation of God with nature was a major reason for the film’s popularity.
When you ask atheists, as I have for decades, what they believe in, the most common answer is “science.” There was a young man, an atheist, at the gym where I work out, who responded, “Science!” (in place of “God bless you”) whenever someone sneezed. There is nothing higher than science for an atheist because the natural world is all there is. So, worship of the Earth, the environment or nature is almost inevitable in a secular world.
From the point of view of the secular, Gaia-worshipping world, Genesis gets even worse when, 27 verses later, God tells human beings to, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” Both instructions infuriate Earth-worshippers. Regarding being fruitful, they oppose people having more than one child, and many advocate having no children so as to have minimal human impact on Mother Earth. But the second part — ruling over nature — is what really angers them.
Maybe the coronavirus will awaken young people, who have been taught by nature-worshipping teachers and raised by nature-worshipping parents, to the idiocy of worshipping nature rather than subduing it. Nature, it turns out, is not our friend, let alone a god. If it were up to nature, we’d all be dead: Animals would eat us; weather would freeze us to death; disease would wipe out the rest of us. If we don’t subdue nature, nature will subdue us. It’s that simple.
Nature is beautiful and awe-inspiring. It’s also brutal and merciless. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred Tennyson aptly describes it. Nature follows no moral rules and shows no compassion. The basic law of all biological life is “survival of the fittest,” while the basic law of Judaism and Christianity is the opposite: the survival of the weakest with the help of the fittest. Nature wants the weakest eaten by the strongest. Hospitals are as anti-natural an entity as exists.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than it is to love one's neighbor.
Religion and science have sometimes appeared in conflict. Yet, the conflict can only be apparent, not real, for science seeks truth, and true religion is truth. There can never be conflict between revealed religion and true science. Truth is truth, whether labeled science or religion. All truth is consistent.
Be sure to keep busy, so the devil may always find you occupied.
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
My life is my message.
To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.
We may say, the works of God and the word of God both constitute the avenues of human information, and that whoever ignores the one deprives himself of much of the benefits which flow from accepting the other; that there are two doors which open to the temple of truth, and they are both indispensably necessary to engage man’s full capacity and to endow him with the principles of knowledge, and with the purposes of his being here upon the earth, together with his origin and final destiny.
The leaders of this Church are the most practical men in it...Our theory is that a man who cannot sustain himself and also teach others how to sustain themselves is unfit for a leading position...
“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Perhaps discussions of religion would be more fruitful if we could rid ourselves of the assumption, common among Christians and practically universal among non-Christians, that God (if God exists) is simpleminded. We readily grant that a great writer such as Joyce or Proust is infinitely subtle and resourceful in fashioning a novel; but we assume that in fashioning human history God will be heavy handed and obvious. Accordingly, some believers conclude that they know exactly what God has in mind and, vested with high office, could provide him with some much needed help… In a parallel way unbelievers conclude that they know what God would do if he existed, and that since those things are not being done, he does not exist...
God has given each of one of us a task, which we can perform better than anyone else. We must find out what that task is, and how to do it in the best way possible.
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only spend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.
Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
Help thy brother's boat across, an Lo! Thine own has reached the shore.
A bone to a dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.
We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
“The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. … He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. … “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.”
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
Now, the prospect of death overshadows all others for me. I am like a man on a sea voyage nearing his destination. When I embarked, I worried about having a cabin with a porthole, whether I should be asked to sit at the captain's table, who were the more attractive and important passengers. All such considerations become pointless, however, when I shall soon be disembarking.
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
“Your discipleship may see the time come when religious convictions are heavily discounted…This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain of people’s opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will soon be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.
In 1978 and already foreseeing these times, Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “We are now entering a period of incredible ironies. Let us cite but one of these ironies which is yet in its subtle stages: we shall see in our time a maximum if indirect effort made to establish irreligion as the state religion. It is actually a new form of paganism that uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of Western civilization to shrink freedom even as it rejects the value essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage…
“In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending toward those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values. In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to reduce the influence of those who still worry over standards such as those in the Ten Commandments. It is always such an easy step from dogmatism to unfair play—especially so when the dogmatists believe themselves to be dealing with primitive people who do not know what is best for them. It is the secular bureaucrat’s burden, you see.
...religious tyranny is the worst form of tyranny.
The end of all knowledge should be virtuous action.
You should not live one way in private, another in public
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
What you do shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for others.
There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations...It makes its own instruments, creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his task.
God's delays are not always God's denials.
Shortcomings in secular and unmarried life may be revealed during the coronavirus pandemic, estimated Prager. “I think that people will realize that there’s been a certain foolishness in thinking that a godless and religionless life is is rich,” said Prager. “It isn’t, and it’s crises that make that clear.” Secular people lack a “built-in community” relative to the faithful, added Prager. Understanding the value of companionship in a loving marriage becomes more widespread in difficult times, Prager remarked. “The other thing that I think is going to come out of this is I think that all these young people in America who have a cavalier attitude toward marriage … may realize that being alone with my CEO status or my Yale PhD isn’t quite as good as being with somebody that I might love and who loves me,” Prager determined.
Prager went on, “God does not abandon us. Just because God doesn’t save us doesn’t mean he’s abandoned us. If God saved everyone in hardship, then belief would be idiocy. It would be nonsense. Of course people would believe. It’s like a celestial butler, ‘God, I have a trouble here, okay?’”
Prager continued, “I am absolutely convinced that a subtext here is that secular people fear death more. And we don’t want to die any more than anyone. I love life. I love my family and friends. I love everything I do. I’m crazy about life, but I don’t fear death. I believe there’s an afterlife. I don’t think this is all there is. Clearly, if you think this is all there is then you will fear losing it more than the guy who thinks this isn’t all there is.”
“Of course we’re better prepared,” replied Prager, describing religious practice as preparation to deal with suffering. “Who’s better prepared if a ship sinks — people who have been practicing swimming their whole life or people who don’t know how to swim? The religious know how to swim when there’s bad stuff.”
“Has the absence of faith left us more vulnerable at this moment? Because I can’t help but feel that it has.” An “absence of faith” leaves people less prepared to confront suffering
Prager described part of his mission as helping people “understand why God is important.” He said, “I never try to convince people about God’s existence. I only try to convince people of God’s necessity. That’s far more important to me.”
The covetous man pines in plenty, like tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty.
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.