“Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality. — Mother Jones November/December 1997.”

“If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race. ”

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”

“Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.”

“You can never get enough of what you don't really want.”

“Love is the movement within life that carries us, that enables us, that causes us to break out of what Alan Watts calls the “skin-encapsulated ego.” Without love, we are self-centered, but love enables us to move the center of our lives outside our ego. Therefore it expands our lives and, needless to say, enriches it. Any human being would give anything to love or be loved. When it really happens, it is like heaven on earth.”

“When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.”