“What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
The Knowledge of the Holy (1978)
Interview by FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm.
Attributed
“What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
The Knowledge of the Holy (1978)
“It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 468; also in The Quantum Dice (1993) by Leonid Ivanovich Ponomarev, p. 50
While touring tsunami-devastated areas with his presidential predecessor, George H. W. Bush, February 2005[citation needed]
2000s
“People like him think that they are god's gift to the world. What's worse, they are.”
Source: Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT! (2004), P. 25
Luck By Chance - My First Film 29 Oct 2018, at 9 Min 03 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B2wChETV5g
From interview with Film Companion
On Silence
Appears on TPCN http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/quotes_katz_jonathan.html
Attributed
“If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.”
“Where the state lacks means of coercion, it is important to control what people think.”
“Though Control in the USA: The Case of the Middle East,” Index on Censorship, July/August 1986, quoted in John H. George, Be Reasonable: Selected Quotations for Inquiring Minds, Prometheus Books, 1994 p. 64
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
Context: From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things… The less the state is able to employ violence in the defense of the interest of the elite groups that effectively dominate it, the more it becomes necessary to devise techniques of ‘manufacture of consent’… Where obedience is guaranteed by violence, rulers may tend towards a ‘behaviourist’ conception; it is enough that people obey; what they think does not matter too much. Where the state lacks means of coercion, it is important to control what people think.
Variant: I think art is the only thing that's spirtual in the world. And I refuse to be forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.
Life Lessons : Truths Concerning People Who Have Lived (1909).