
Treatise 4: “Idolatry,” H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 73
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)
Last Notebook (1942) p. 308
First and Last Notebooks (1970)
Context: No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
Treatise 4: “Idolatry,” H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 73
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)
Somnath (Gujarat) Kalimat-i-Tayyibat, quoted in Sarkar, Jadu Nath, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. III, pp. 185-86. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/page/n295
Quotes from late medieval histories
George Santayana, in "On My Friendly Critics", in Soliloquies in England (1922)
S - Z, George Santayana
“God is one, but He is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects.”
Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 458
Context: In a potter's shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms — pots, jars, dishes, plates, etc., — but all are made of the same clay. So God is one, but He is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects.
“Richard Dawkins is arguably England's most pious atheist.”
Source: Life's Solution (2003), p. 315.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way”
1940s, State of the Union Address — The Four Freedoms (1941)
Context: In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
“Man is not worshipful unless he is clement.”
Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.2, p. 113.
Religious Wisdom
Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 45