Source: Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps
“Your religion is not the best nor the worst when compared to other beliefs.”
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, ch. 10.
“I feel very strongly about souls who are misguiding people in the name of religion.”
From interview with Subhash K. Jha
“Sinatra brings out the best and worst in people.”
"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)
“Organized religions by their very natures are misleading.”
Oui interview (1979)
Context: Organized religions by their very natures are misleading. The bottom line is always money. What that’s got to do with your spiritual well-being still eludes me. It’s always the bucks, no matter how they disguise it. If you need that sort of assistance to keep yourself together, you may be paying a higher rate to a fake religion than you would to a psychotherapist. Which is not to say that a psychotherapist is going to give you any better value per dollar either. lf you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual. If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you. Because it all comes from inside. As a matter of fact, that’s where it stays.
“Ancient magic was the very foundation of religion.”
Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 4, Magic and Religion
Peter L. Berger, Gregor Thuswaldner. " A Conversation with Peter L. Berger "How My Views Have Changed http://thecresset.org/2014/Lent/Thuswaldner_L14.html," at thecresset.org, Lent 2014, Vol LXXVII, No. 3, pp 16-21
