Quotes about spiritual
page 16

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

From a speech on the state of the Middle East, September 10, 1968 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/lbjpeace1.html
1960s

Rajiv Malhotra photo

“I think of the telephone as a spiritual thing. Your bodies don't have to unite you, but your spirits can unite.”

Joan Walsh Anglund (1926) American poet and children's book author

As quoted in Kentucky News September 13, 2014 http://www.kentucky.com/2014/09/13/3427193_joan-walsh-anglund-a-writer-with.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Frederick William Robertson photo

“Only what coronation is in an earthly way, baptism is in a heavenly way; God's authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 21.

Jerry Coyne photo
Sun Myung Moon photo

“Absolute faith is not the place of self-affirmation, but the place of self-negation. Life of faith is not limited to our spiritual life. What is important is how our spiritual sensitivity is applied to our relative environment.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

The Way of God's Will Chapter 3-2 Life of Faith http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw3-02.htm Translated 1980.

Sarah Schulman photo
Eva Mendes photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira photo
Georges Rouault photo
Louis Pasteur photo
Herbert Hoover photo
Martin Sheen photo

“Religious structure often dilutes the spiritual experience.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 53

Pearl S.  Buck photo

“Had Japan been a tenth as wise as Abraham Lincoln, had Hitler been a hundredth part as sensible, we today, the United States and England, would not have a chance in this war. Had those two enemies of ours coveted the lands upon subject peoples dwell today and had they whispered the magic word freedom to those peoples, they might have set half the world against us in a moment. But they have lost because they attacked lands already free, and because they have enslaved peoples accustomed to freedom. By this one thing alone, if by no other, they are doomed. They have misread the hearts and minds of men. By their enslavement of the peoples whom they have made subject by force of arms, they have aroused against themselves a greater force than can be found in any army, in any weapon. It is this- the will of men everywhere to be free. Let us learn today from Abraham Lincoln, as we fight this war still so far from victory. He could not win that war until he lit the fire in the hearts of men and women enslaved. Nothing had been enough to make men rise up and shout aloud for victory until that moment. A few men like war and enjoy it as a game. But most men and all women hate war. They will not fight with their whole hearts unless they are set aflame. And the torch is always the same words. Whisper those words and men and women will shout them aloud and sing them as they march. The words are simple but they are the most potent in the universe- they are the spiritual dynamite of victory. The words? "All persons held as slaves… are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 195

Flower A. Newhouse photo
Ken Ham photo
Prem Rawat photo
Ken Wilber photo
Franz Kafka photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo

“…the prisoner’s dreams is the guard’s spirituality”

(400).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Radhanath Swami photo

“When we expect transformation to occur through external experiences, we are opting for an inferior model of spiritual formation.”

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Šantidéva photo
Melanie Phillips photo
Pamela Anderson photo

“Sexuality is an expression of our spirituality. Sex makes you get real.”

Pamela Anderson (1967) Canadian-American model, producer, author, former showgirl

Playboy, July 1992.

Adyashanti photo

“Perhaps the most important element of any spiritual teaching is what we bring to it, because this dictates what the teaching will reveal within ourselves.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

The Basic Teachings - Part 3: Orientation to the Teaching (2010)

Nikolai Berdyaev photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo

“As you grow spiritually, you will find yourself teaching more as you learn more. Your learning and your teaching will take place even in your sleep.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 26

Ammon Hennacy photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Mary Parker Follett photo
Luis Barragán photo
Max Scheler photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Dogen photo
Brian Wilson photo
Franz Werfel photo

“Happiness is … the grace of being permitted to unfold … all the spiritual powers planted within us.”

Franz Werfel (1890–1945) Austrian-Bohemian author

As quoted in Journey to New Beginnings : Finding Peace Within (2006) by Debbie Ziemann, p. 167

James A. Michener photo
Russell Brand photo
Tom Robbins photo
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven photo

“[I had] pushed through to a spiritual sex: art--that nobody protects as readily as a charming love body of flesh.”

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927) German poet

Quoted in Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity, p 54.

Sri Aurobindo photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
`Abdu'l-Bahá photo

“Love is the mystery of divine revelations!
Love is the effulgent manifestation!
Love is the spiritual fulfillment!
Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!
Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!
Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!
Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!
Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!
Love is the bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!
Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!
Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!
Love is the one law which causeth and controleth order among the existing atoms!
Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the loft firmament!
Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!
Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!
Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!
Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!
The people who are confirmed therein are indeed glorified by the Supreme Concourse, the angels of heaven and the dwellers of the Kingdom of El-Abha! But if the hearts of the people become devoid of the Divine Grace — the Love of God — they wander in the desert of ignorance, descend to the depths of ruin and fall to the abyss of despair where there is no refuge! They are like insects living in the lowest plane.
O beloved of God! Be ye the manifestations of God and the lamps of guidance throughout all regions shining with the light of love and union!
How beautiful the effulgence of this light!”

`Abdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921) Son of Bahá'u'lláh and leader of the Bahá'í Faith

“O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!…” in Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas (1909), p. 730 http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAB/tab-573.html

Angelique Rockas photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values: that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Variant: If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover these precious values: that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

“The Lord… said: Unless a man shall eat my flesh, he shall not have in himself eternal life. Certain of his disciples, the seventy to wit, were scandalised, and said: This is a hard saying; who can understand it? And they departed from him, and walked with him no more. His saying… seemed to them a hard one. They received it foolishly: they thought of it carnally. For they fancied, that the Lord was going to cut from his own body certain morsels and to give those morsels to them. Hence they said: This is a hard saying. But they themselves were hard: not the saying. For, if, instead of being hard, they had been mild, they would have… learned from him what those learned, who remained while they departed. For, when the twelve disciples had remained with him after the others had departed,… he instructed them, and said unto them: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words, which I speak unto you, are spirit and life. As if he had said: Understand spiritually what I have spoken. You are Not about to eat this identical body, which you see; and you are Not about to drink this identical blood, which they who crucify me will pour out. I have commended unto you a certain sacrament. This, if spiritually understood, will quicken you. Though it must be celebrated visibly, it must be understood invisibly.”

George Stanley Faber (1773–1854) British theologian

Source: Christ's Discourse at Capernaum: Fatal to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation (1840), pp. 144-147

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“Kandinsky points out [in his book On the Spiritual in Art] that Theosophy (in its true sense; not as it generally appears) is yet another expression of the same spiritual movement which we are now seeing in painting.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In 'De Nieuwe beelding in de Schilderkunst', Piet Mondriaan, 'De Stijl' No. 1, October 1917, p. 54
1910's

Sri Aurobindo photo
Roger Ebert photo

“Here is how [life] happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation — but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again… This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/synecdoche-new-york-2008 of Synecdoche, New York (5 November 2008)
Reviews, Four star reviews

“We can see quite plainly that our present civilisation is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves, and we believe the spiritual destiny of man is such that in time he will view with abhorrence the idea that men once fed on the products of animals' bodies.”

Donald Watson (1910–2005) English vegan activist

Inaugural newsletter of the Vegan Society, Vegan News no. 1 (November 1944). Quoted in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, edited by Linda Kalof (Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 30 https://books.google.it/books?id=Cdv_DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA30.

“Wilderness to the people of America is a spiritual necessity, an antidote to the high pressure of modern life, a means of regaining serenity and equilibrium.”

Sigurd F. Olson (1899–1982) American conservationist

"We Need Wilderness," National Parks Magazine, January–March 1946

Frederick William Robertson photo

“In all matters of eternal truth, the soul is before the intellect; the things of God are spiritually discerned. You know truth by being true; you recognize God by being like Him.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 605.

Van Morrison photo

“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

The Times [London] (6 July 1990)

Sri Aurobindo photo
Jadunath Sarkar photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“In the stupendous rush of change which is coming on the human world as a result of the present tornado of upheaval, ancient India's culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping…. Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence…. To follow a law or principle involuntarily or ignorantly or contrary to the truth of one's consciousness is a falsehood and a self-destruction. To allow oneself to be killed, like the lamb attacked by the wolf, brings no growth, farthers no development, assures no spiritual merit. Concert or unity may come in good time, but it must be an underlying unity with a free differentiation, not a swallowing up of one by another or an incongruous and inharmonious mixture. Nor can it come before the world is ready for these greater things. To lay down one's arms in a state of war is to invite destruction and it can serve no compensating spiritual purpose…. India is indeed awaking and defending herself, but not sufficiently and not with the whole-heartedness, the clear sight and the firm resolution which can alone save her from the peril. Today it is close; let her choose,… for the choice is imperatively before her, to live or to perish.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

December, 1918
India's Rebirth

Confucius photo

“To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter VI

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Ramnath Goenka photo
Theodor Reuss photo
Everett Dean Martin photo
Wilkie Collins photo
Michael Franti photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Julian of Norwich photo
K. R. Narayanan photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

As quoted in David Cantor and Alan M. Schwartz (1995), Anti-Defamation League book -The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism In America

John Angell James photo
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Marsden Hartley photo

“They [The Mason family where Hartley stayed 1935 - 1941] maintain an enviable balance between the material & spiritual worlds (so) they symbolize for me the term ideal.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

Quote of Hartley in his letter to Adelaide Kuntz, September 9, 1936; as cited in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 124-125
1931 - 1943

Franz Marc photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Ken Ham photo

“I believe President Obama’s legacy will be one that, in many ways, is greatly responsible for aiding in the catastrophic “spiritual climate change” seen in the USA, which is also reverberating in other Western nations. And really, dealing with “climate change” should be the priority for all Christians, i. e., in helping to change the nation’s spiritual climate, as today we see the culture becoming more anti-Christian.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"President Obama—Yes, Responsible for Climate Change!" https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/07/13/president-obama-responsible-climate-change/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 13, 2015)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

G. K. Chesterton photo
William Dalrymple photo

“In the course of my travels I often came across the assumption that intense spirituality was somehow the preserve of what many call 'the mystic east'… it's a misconception that has always irritated me as I've always regarded our own indigenous British traditions of spirituality as especially rich.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

In The Long Search http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/05_may/27/long_search.shtml, BBC, 27 May 2002
On his search to discover the roots of spirituality in the British Isles covering the "divine supermarket" of Roman Britain with a plethora of gods - Celtic, Roman, Persian and a new god from Palestine called Jesus.

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Yves Klein photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a “Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)