“The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.”

“Often there are two different reasons given for this natural desire to simplify. First is that we as humans have a very limited imagination and whichever medium we use to understand the world - be it science, religion, philosophy, or art -we will end up exploting the same limited set of ideas available to us.”

“In many ways, religion comes from the same place in us that art comes from. The language of the human heart if poetry”

“So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns. Education is certainly only habit. Now are there not people who forget and lose their education? Others who keep it? Where does this difference come from? If the name nature were limited to habits conformable to nature, we would spare ourselves this garble!”

“...all religions seek to approach the reality of God through symbols, and these symbols point to the mystery of human life, pushing us beyond ourselves, beyond our limits...there is a danger of stopping short at the sign, which will then become a wall which separates us from truth.”

“Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.”