Independence Day of the American Nation, History, Celebrations, Curiosities, Quotes and Cultural Traditions. The United States of America is celebrating its 250th birthday on Saturday, July 4th, 2026.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Mahatma Gandhi

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus

This Independence Day, remind us that we have the freedom to become more culturally competent and free for business, finance and social human sake.
Carl William Brown

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

Independence Day is annually celebrated on July 4 and is often known as “the Fourth of July”. It is the anniversary of the publication of the declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776. Patriotic displays and family events are organized throughout the United States. Independence Day is a patriotic public holiday celebrated by Americans worldwide. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed.

Independence was claimed on July 4, 1776, from Britain, at which time our Democracy was born. We are the “land of the free and home of the brave”. Independence Day is a day of family celebrations with picnics and barbecues, showing a great deal of emphasis on the American tradition of political freedom. Activities associated with the day include watermelon or hotdog eating competitions and sporting events, such as baseball games, three-legged races, swimming activities and tug-of-war games. We are a diverse nation, made up of a variety of dynamic people.

Americans all over the world are gearing themselves up for huge Independence Day celebrations this week, which are now just a few hours away. This year marks the 243rd celebration of the American national holiday, and the day is typically honoured with parties and firework displays across the USA. Usually, a special event is also held at the White House to mark Independence Day, an occasion which is a huge celebration for many across the country.

Always held on July 4, Independence Day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the US in 1776. Since Christopher Columbus led a Spanish expedition to the “New World” in 1492, much of what is modern day America was under European rule. Most of North and South America was divided up between the Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch governments. In 1606, King James I decided to establish permanent settlements in the Americas and formed the Colony of Virginia the following year.

At around the same time, the Dutch, Swedish, and French also established successful North American colonies – but these eventually came under the English crown. In 1732 the Province of Georgia was established and became the 13th colony ruled by the British Empire. In 1782 the British Parliament finally agreed to end all offensive operations in North America and the following year all parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States and formally end the war. The last British troops departed New York City on November 25, 1783, marking the end of British rule in the new United States.

In 1775, people in New England began fighting the British for their independence. On July 2, 1776, the Congress secretly voted for independence from Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, 1776, the final wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved, and the document was published. The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence was on July 8, 1776. Delegates began to sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776. In 1870, Independence Day was made an unpaid holiday for federal employees. In 1941, it became a paid holiday for them.

The first description of how Independence Day would be celebrated was in a letter from John Adams to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776. He described “pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations” throughout the United States. However, the term “Independence Day” was not used until 1791. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both signers of the Declaration of Independence and presidents of the United States, died on July 4, 1826 – exactly 50 years after the adoption of the declaration. It is also important to note that Native Americans lived in the country and each tribe had its own nation and government prior to the European settlers.

How is Independence Day celebrated?

Many people display the American flag outside their homes or buildings. Many communities arrange fireworks that are often accompanied by patriotic music. The most impressive fireworks are shown on television. Some employees use one or more of their vacation days to create a long weekend so that they can escape the heat at their favorite beach or vacation spot. Independence Day is a patriotic holiday for celebrating the positive aspects of the United States. Many politicians appear at public events to show their support for the history, heritage and people of their country. Above all, people in the United States express and give thanks for the freedom and liberties fought by the first generation of many of today’s Americans. The Statue of Liberty is a national monument that is associated with Independence Day.

In 1938, July 4 became a national paid holiday and Independence Day is therefore a federal holiday. If July 4 is a Saturday, it is observed on Friday, July 3. If July 4 is a Sunday, it is observed on Monday, July 5. Government offices and schools are closed. Some businesses may be closed as well. In some years, many employees use a proportion of their vacation days to create a long weekend. This can cause congestion in some places, particularly towards popular holiday destinations. There are many public events, parades, shows and fireworks displays. This may cause local disruption to traffic. Public transit systems do not usually operate on their regular timetables.

There are many firework displays around the country, accompanied by parties and parades. Some choose to make the most of not being at work to spend it with their families and friends. Trump blimp ‘twin’ set to crash President’s Independence Day rally. Bristol in Rhode Island has the nation’s longest-running Independence Day celebrations, with festivities taking place since 1785. The festivities there start mid June and conclude with a 2.5 miles military parade on July 4, followed by a ball.

The White House stages a large fireworks celebration and Macy’s fireworks in New York are famously screened across the country. This year, Jennifer Hudson is set to perform at the Macy’s show to celebrate the Wizard of Oz turning 80. According to CNN, the National Retail Foundation estimated that Americans spend $5.32 billion on food for cookouts and picnics to celebrate July 4.

Somewhat controversially, Donald Trump has announced plans for an Independence Day rally dubbed “Salute to America”. The festivities include a military parade – featuring tanks and fighter jets – through the streets of Washington DC, fireworks and a free concert at which thousands are expected to attend. The president has also announced he will address the nation from the Lincoln Memorial on the city’s National Mall.

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Independence Day Quotes

Juneteenth or Freedom Day

Here are the major U.S. holidays. In some cases, businesses, government offices, and schools will be closed, and also the International Days list.

New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day
MLK Jr. Day
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter/Spring Break
Mother’s Day
Memorial Day
Father’s Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
International Days List

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Independence Day Quotes, Aphorisms, Ideas and Thoughts by Famous Authors, Writers and Politicians on the American Independence Day holiday and celebrations.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Mahatma Gandhi

Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
Abraham Lincoln

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
Nelson Mandela

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
William Faulkner

The United States was born in revolution and nurtured by struggle. Throughout our history, the American people have befriended and supported all those who seek independence and a better way of life.
Robert Kennedy

Liberty is maintained by responsible freedom.
Roger W Hancock

Your freedom is brought to you courtesy of the outstanding Men and Women who serve and have served this country with honor, dedication, pride and sacrifice!
Nishan Panwar

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
Marquis de Lafayette

This Independence Day, remind us that we have the freedom to become more culturally competent and free for business, finance and social human sake.
Carl William Brown

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and the liberties that remain the foundation of our nation today.
Doc Hastings

God give us peace without peace we are without freedom.
Ellen J. Barrier

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
Khalil Gibran

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
Louis Brandeis

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
Simone Weil

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy

Independence doesn’t mean you decide the way you want.
Stephen Breyer

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
Samuel Adams

Let freedom never perish in your hands.
Joseph Addison

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
John F. Kennedy

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.
John F. Kennedy

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.
Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Freedom lies in being bold.
Robert Frost

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.
Bob Marley

Freedom is never given; it is won.
A. Philip Randolph

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson

Enjoy the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies!
Joseph Hopkinson

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela

Independence means enjoying freedom and empowering others too to let them do so.
Vikrmn

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Independence Day

Juneteenth or Freedom Day

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Juneteenth or Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, annual holiday celebrated on June 19 in the United States to commemorate the ending of slavery.

History of America is incomplete without the Juneteenth because We Americans believe in respecting freedom and the notion of it.

Juneteenth marks the end of slavery and begining of a new era where men and women had the basic human rights and they could live life on their own terms.

Slavery was a curse to the society and now that it’s gone, let’s celebrate Juneteenth in a grand manner!

The essence of life is when it is enjoyed with a dash of freedom. Juneteenth will always be remembered as it freed hundreds and thousands of souls trapped in the net of slavery!

Without freedom life would be like a thirsty man on a sea. You can see water everywhere but drink nothing and eventually die deep within due to thirst (thirst of freedom). Wishing you Juneteenth remembrance.

The celebration of abolition of slavery is one of the biggest steps in the history of the nation and hence it needs to be celebrated with great joy! Happy Juneteenth!

Celebrate freedom like never before on this Juneteenth because at the end of the day nothing matters more than a happy mind.

Without much to speak, the Juneteenth is one of the most important days on the calendar. Happy homecoming to the feeling of freedom.

Can you imagine a life that was owed to others and you would be constantly used by others as their slaves? No, right ? Thanks to Juneteenth for happening!

You can rule people’s hearts but not their lives and this is what Juneteenth day reminds us always. Freedom is basic!

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, annual holiday celebrated on June 19 in the United States to commemorate the ending of slavery. For more than a century, Juneteenth was observed mainly in Texas and parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. In recent decades, communities across the nation have adopted the holiday.

June 19 marks the day in 1865 when word reached African Americans in Texas that slavery in the United States had been abolished. More than two years earlier, on New Year’s Day, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Delivered during the American Civil War, this proclamation ordered the freeing of all slaves in states that were rebelling against Union forces. The proclamation had little effect in Texas, where there were few Union troops to enforce the order.

African American residents of Austin, Texas, celebrate the “freedom day” festival known as Juneteenth. The annual holiday, celebrated June 19th, commemorates the date in 1865 on which General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas to force renegade slave owners to release their slaves.

Before Granger’s arrival, slaves in the region did not know that they were legally free, even though the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had freed them more than two years previously. Today Juneteenth is celebrated throughout the country, but festivities are especially prominent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

News of the proclamation officially reached Texas on June 19, 1865, when a Union general backed by nearly 2,000 troops arrived in the city of Galveston. The general, Gordon Granger, publicly announced that slavery in the United States had ended.

Reactions among newly freed slaves ranged from shock and disbelief to jubilant celebration. That day has been known ever since as Juneteenth, a name probably derived from the slang combination of the words June and nineteenth.

Juneteenth celebrations began in Texas the following year. Within a few years they had spread to other states and became an annual tradition. Celebrations often opened with praying and religious ceremonies and included a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

A wide range of festivities entertained participants, from music and dancing to contests of physical strength and intellect. Food was central to the celebrations, and barbecued meats were especially popular.

In the late 19th century, African Americans in the largely segregated South began migrating north and west in search of a better life. Many of these blacks transplanted their Juneteenth celebrations with them. African Americans continued to migrate from the South to other parts of the country during the late 1930s and 1940s. By World War II (1939-1945), however, Juneteenth celebrations began to decline.

Historians cite several reasons for this. Many African Americans, removed by 70 years or more from the 1865 emancipation, were less inclined to carry forward the enthusiastic celebrations of earlier generations. In addition, some historians note that many African Americans wanted to distance themselves from vestiges of slavery.

Interest in Juneteenth celebrations further waned during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when the holiday was associated with past repression and segregation. In some southern cities, Juneteenth was the only day each year when all-white local governments would permit African Americans to use city parks and zoos. In 1980 Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas. Since then, observance of Juneteenth has spread to other parts of the United States.

Today, Juneteenth celebrates freedom for African Americans in addition to many other themes, including education, self-improvement, African American accomplishments throughout history, and tolerance and respect for all cultures. Festivities may include parades, picnics, tributes and speeches, music, gospel performances, exhibitions, baseball games, rodeos, and other activities.

Around 24 states and the District of Columbia are set to legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday this year, according to a Pew Research Center analysis which forecasts that more states will recognize it as a paid holiday next year. Since the holiday was signed into federal law, multiple states have had Juneteenth as a paid holiday for employees.

States With Juneteeth As Paid Holiday

According to The Pew Charitable Trusts:

New York, Maine, Louisiana, Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, and Texas, which was  the first state to officially recognize the holiday in 1980.
Georgia, Ohio, Nebraska, Maryland, South Dakota, Colorado, Connecticut, and Delaware, Alabama recently recognized Juneteenth as a paid state holiday, according to News Observer.

You can also read some articles about other Festival and Holiday Days:

Martin Luther King Day   January 17, 2022

Saint Valentine’s Day  February 14, 2022

Presidents Day   February 21, 2022

Saint Patrick Day  March 17, 2022

April Fools Day  April 1, 2022

Good Friday April 15, 2022

International Worker Day  May 1, 2022

Memorial Day    May 30, 2022

Juneteenth Holiday  June 20, 2022 

Independence Day  July 4, 2022

Labor Day  September 5, 2022

Halloween or all hallows eve  October 31, 2022

Thanksgiving Day  November 24, 2022

Black Friday Day  November 25, 2022

Christmas Holidays   December 25, 2022

Chinese New Year  February 1, 2022

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Jiddu Krishnamurti reflections, ideas and thoughts, this Indian philosopher and theologian was the first teacher to spread Eastern religious thought in the United States.

Surely that thing which you fight you become. If I am angry and you meet me with anger what is the result? More anger. You have become that which I am. If I am evil and you fight me with evil means then you also become evil, however righteous you may feel. If I am brutal and you use brutal methods to overcome me, then you become brutal like me. And this we have done for thousands of years. Surely there is a different approach than to meet hate by hate. If I use violent methods to quell anger in myself then I am using wrong means for a right end, and thereby the right end ceases to be. In this there is no understanding; there is no transcending anger. Anger is to be studied tolerantly and understood; it is not to be overcome through violent means. Anger may be the result of many causes and without comprehending them there is no escape from anger.
We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the cause of enmity and cease to feed it by our thought, feeling, and action. This is an arduous task demanding constant self-awareness and intelligent pliability, for what we are the society, the state is. The enemy and the friend are the outcome of our thought and action. We are responsible for creating enmity and so it is more important to be aware of our own thought and action than to be concerned with the foe and the friend, for right thinking puts an end to division. Love transcends the friend and the enemy.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine…
Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply – aware.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Voilà ce que des millions de personnes soi-disant religieuses ont fait au cours des âges ; soit en s’isolant, en s’en allant dans un désert, sur une montagne ou dans une caverne ; soit en errant de village en village avec un bol de mendiant ; ou bien en se réunissant en groupes, dans des monastères, en vue de contraindre leur esprit à se conformer à des modèles établis.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect … Your have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are the world. The world is you and me, the world is not separate from you and me. We have created this world – the world of violence, the world of wars, the world of religious divisions, sex, anxieties, the utter lack of communication with each other, with no sense of compassion, consideration for another. Wherever one goes in any country throughout the world, human beings, that is, you and another, suffer; we are anxious, we are uncertain, we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything has become uncertain. Right through the world as human beings we are in sorrow, fear, anxiety, violence, uncertain of everything, insecure. There is a common relationship between us all. We are the world essentially, basically, fundamentally. The world is you, and you are the world. Realizing that fundamentally, deeply, not romantically, not intellectually but actually, then we see that our problem is a global problem. It is not my problem or your particular problem, it is a human problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beauty is complete order. But most of us have not that sense of beauty in our lives. We may be great artists, great painters, expert in various things, but in our own daily life, with all the anxieties and miseries, we live, unfortunately, a very disordered life. It is a fact. You may a great scientist, you may be a great expert in a subject, but you have your own problems, struggles, pain, anxieties and the rest of it. We are asking, is it possible to live in complete order within, not impose discipline, control, but to inquire into the nature of this disorder, what are the causes, and to dispel, move away, wash away the cause. Then there is a living order in the universe.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. An Ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is. To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need; food, clothing and shelter, is destroyed. Some of you will nod your heads and say, I agree, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be only stopped when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Mais lire, jouer, rire, être cruel, être bon, contempler le fleuve, les nuages, tout cela fait partie de la vie, et si vous ne savez pas lire, si vous ne savez pas marcher, si vous êtes incapable d’apprécier la beauté d’une feuille, vous n’êtes pas vivant. Vous devez comprendre la globalité de la vie, pas simplement une parcelle. Voilà pourquoi vous devez lire, voilà pourquoi vous devez regarder le ciel, voilà pourquoi vous devez chanter, et danser, et écrire des poèmes, et souffrir, et comprendre: car c’est tout cela, la vie.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity – and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies?
You are this, which does not satisfy, so you want to be that. If there were an understanding of this, would that come into being? Because you do not understand this, you create that, hoping through that to understand or to escape from this.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You cannot reconcile creativeness with technical achievement. You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter…having lost the song, we pursue the singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up from nothing; you will invent your own technique, you won’t have to study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very seeing of beauty is an art.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don’t know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and he doesn’t find a way out of it. Therefore he invents gods, churches, all the rituals, and all that nonsense, or he escapes in different ways. What we are trying to do, during all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind, not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn’t answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You say you love your wife. You depend on her; she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of security and well-being. Then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else, and your whole emotional balance is destroyed, and this disturbance, which you don’t like, is called jealousy. There is pain in it, anxiety, hate and violence. So what you are really saying is, ‘As long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don’t I begin to hate you.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, “What did that man pick up?” “He picked up a piece of the truth,” said the devil. “That is a very bad business for you, then,” said his friend. “Oh, not at all,” the devil replied, “I am going to help him organize it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

By our pontifical assertions, our superior impatience, and our casual brushing aside of their curiosity, we do not encourage their inquiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be asked of us; we do not foster their discontent, for we ourselves have ceased to question.
conformant, notre action et notre pensée deviennent mécaniques, nos réactions de la Terre. Si leurs récits nous satisfont, c’est que nous vivons de découvert par nous-mêmes, rien d’originel, de non corrompu, de clair.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Find out what it means to die – not physically, that’s inevitable – but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased. …I have seen the Light. I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world. …Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds – in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Order is virtue. And order isn’t a thing to be cultivated; you can’t say I will be orderly, I will do this and I won’t do that – then you are merely disciplining yourself, becoming more and more rigid, mechanical. Such a mind is totally incapable of coming upon this beauty that has no name, no expression. Order, like virtue, cannot be cultivated-if you cultivate humility you are obviously not humble; you can cultivate vanity, but to cultivate humility is not possible any more than to cultivate love. So order which is virtue cannot be practised. All that one can do is to see this total disorder within and outside oneself-see it! You can see this total disorder instantly and that is the only thing that matters-to see it instantly.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Nous, les êtres humains, somme ce que nous avons été pendant des millions d’années, colossalement avides, envieux, agressifs, jaloux, angoissés et désespérés, avec d’occasionnels éclairs de joie et d’amour. Nous sommes une étrange mixture de haine, de peur et de gentillesse ; nous sommes à la fois violents et en paix. Il y a eu un progrès extérieur depuis le char à boeufs jusqu’à l’avion à réaction, mais psychologiquement l’individu n’a pas du tout changé et c’est l’individu qui, dans le monde entier, a créé les structures des sociétés. Les structures sociales extérieures sont les résultantes des structures intérieures, psychologiques, qui constituent nos relations humaines, car l’individu est le résultat de l’expérience totale de l’homme, de sa connaissance et de son comportement. Chacun de nous est l’entrepôt de tout le passé. L’individu est l’humain qui est toute l’humanité. L’histoire entière de l’homme est écrite en nous-mêmes.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our look is as bound by time-space as our brain. We never look, we never see beyond this limitation; we do not know how to look through and beyond these fragmentary frontiers. But the eyes have to see beyond them, penetrating deeply and widely, without choosing, without shelter; they have to wander beyond man-made frontiers of ideas and values and to feel beyond love. Then there is a benediction which no god can give.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world’s problems.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To me, then, true criticism consists in trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, and not in attributing a quality to that thing. You attribute a quality to an environment, to an experience, only when you want to derive something from it, when you want to gain or to have power or happiness. Now this destroys true criticism. Your desire is perverted through attributing values, and therefore you cannot see clearly. Instead of trying to see the flower in its original and entire beauty, you look at it through coloured glasses, and therefore you can never see it as it is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief concern.
How many members are there in it?” That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. “How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false.” I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. As I said, if there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough.
Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.
So you will see how absurd is the whole structure that you have built, looking for external help, depending on others for your comfort, for your happiness, for your strength. These can only be found within yourselves.
You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

All that we have invented, the symbols in the church, the rituals, they are all put there by thought. Thought has invented these things. Invented the savior. Invented the temples of India and the contents of the temples. Thought has invented all these things called sacred. You cannot deny that. So thought in itself is not sacred. And when thought invents God, God is not sacred. So what is sacred? That can only be understood or happen when there is complete freedom, from fear, from sorrow, and when there is this sense of love and compassion with it’s own intelligence. Then when the mind is utterly still, that which is sacred can take place.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

As one sat in the aeroplane amidst all the noise, smoking and loud talking, most unexpectedly, the sense of immensity and that extraordinary benediction which was felt at il L., that imminent feeling of sacredness, began to take place. The body was nervously tense because of the crowd, noise, etc. but in spite of all this, it was there. The pressure and the strain were intense and there was acute pain at the back of the head. There was only this state and there was no observer. The whole body was wholly in it and the feeling of sacredness was so intense that a groan escaped from the body and passengers were sitting in the next seats. It went on for several hours, late into the night. It was as though one was looking, not with eyes only but with a thousand centuries; it was altogether a strange occurrence. The brain was completely empty, all reaction had stopped; during all those hours, one was not aware of this emptiness but only in writing it is the thing known, but this knowledge is only descriptive and not real. That the brain could empty itself is an odd phenomenon. As the eyes were closed, the body, the brain seemed to plunge into unfathomable depths, into states of incredible sensitivity and beauty. The passenger in the next seat began to ask something and having replied, this intensity was there; there was no continuity but only being. And dawn was coming leisurely and the clear sky was filling with light – As this is being written late in the day, with sleepless fatigue, that sacredness is there. The pressure and the strain too.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

How does fear come into this? I had pain yesterday; there is the memory of it and I do not want it again tomorrow. Thinking about the pain of yesterday, thinking which involves the memory of yesterday’s pain, projects the fear of having pain again tomorrow. So it is thought that brings about fear. Thought breeds fear; thought also cultivates pleasure. To understand fear you must also understand pleasure – they are interrelated; without understanding one you cannot understand the other. This means that one cannot say ‘I must only have pleasure and no fear’; fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there’s no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for sport, for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Je pense qu’il y a une différence entre l’être humain et l’individu. L’individu est une entité locale, qui vit dans tel pays, qui appartient à telle culture, à telle société, à telle religion. L’être humain n’est pas une entité locale. Il est partout. Si l’individu n’agit que dans un coin du vaste champ de la vie, son action n’aura aucun lien avec la totalité. Veuillez donc tenir présent à l’esprit que ce dont nous parlons est la totalité, non la partie, car dans le plus grand est le plus petit, mais dans le plus petit, le plus grand n’est pas.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

La cause fondamentale du désordre en nous-mêmes est cette recherche d’une réalité promise par autrui. Nous obéissons mécaniquement à celui qui nous promet une vie spirituelle confortable. Alors que la plupart d’entre nous sont opposés à la tyrannie politique et à la dictature, c’est extraordinaire à quel point nous acceptons l’autorité et la tyrannie de ceux qui déforment nos esprits et qui faussent notre mode de vie.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I think it is always important to ask fundamental questions, but when we do ask a fundamental question, most of us are seeking an answer, and then the answer is invariably superficial because there is no yes or no answer to life. Life is a movement, an endless movement, and to inquire into this extraordinary thing called life, with all its innumerable aspects, one must ask fundamental questions and never be satisfied with answers, however satisfactory they may be, because the moment you have an answer, the mind has concluded, and conclusion is not life – it is merely a static state. So what is important is to ask the right question and never be satisfied with the answer, however clever, however logical, because the truth of the question lies beyond the conclusion, beyond the answer, beyond the verbal expression. The mind that asks a question and is merely satisfied with an explanation, a verbal statement, remains superficial. It is only the mind that asks a fundamental question and is capable of pursuing that question to the end – it is only such a mind that can find out what is truth.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another – and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.
If I use you for my fulfillment for my happiness, you become very unimportant, because it is my happiness I am concerned with. So when the mind is concerned with the idea that it can have happiness through somebody, through a thing or through an idea, do I not make all these means transitory? Because my concern is then something else, to go further, to catch something beyond.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

La Vérité n’a pas de sentier, et c’est cela sa beauté : elle est vivante. Une chose morte peut avoir un sentier menant à elle, car elle est statique. Mais lorsque vous voyez que la vérité est vivante, mouvante, qu’elle n’a pas de lieu où se reposer, qu’aucun temple, aucune mosquée ou église, qu’aucune religion, qu’aucun maître ou philosophe, bref que rien ne peut vous y conduire . alors vous verrez aussi que cette chose vivante est ce que vous êtes en toute réalité : elle est votre colère, votre brutalité, votre violence, votre désespoir. Elle est l’agonie et la douleur que vous vivez. La vérité est en la compréhension de tout cela, vous ne pouvez le comprendre qu’en sachant le voir dans votre vie. Il est impossible de le voir à travers une idéologie, à travers un écran de mots, à travers l’espoir et la peur.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody “I love you”, when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, worshipping the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world; watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again – you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Now, please has created this pattern of social life. We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in acquiring knowledge or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being, but society accepts it, because at the end of your ambition, you are either so called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of our difficulties is, surely, that we want to be happy through something, through a person, through a symbol, through an idea, through virtue, through action, through companionship. We think happiness, or reality, or what you like to call it, can be found through something. Therefore we feel that through action, through companionship, through certain ideas, we will find happiness. So being lonely, I want to find someone or some idea through which I can be happy. But loneliness always remains; it is ever there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It’s the mirror of your consciousness: this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joys and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

So let us decide whether you want a shelter, a safety zone, which will no longer yield conflict, whether you want to escape from the present conflict to enter a condition in which there shall be no conflict; or whether you are unaware, unconscious of this conflict in which you exist. If you are unconscious of the conflict, that is, the battle that is taking place between that self and the environment, if you are unconscious of that battle, then why do you seek further remedies? Remain unconscious.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Jiddu Krishnamurti best quotes, aphorisms, ideas, thoughts and words of wisdom by this great stateless philosopher, orator, and mystic of Indian ethnicity.

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . .
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

A man who says, ‘I want to change, tell me how to’, seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. He wants an authority whom he hopes will bring about order in himself. But can authority ever bring about inward order? Order imposed from without must always breed disorder.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Analysis does not transform consciousness.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact what we really are.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

And the point is, is it possible for the mind to be totally free from suffering and yet not become indifferent, callous, irresponsible, but to have that passion, the intensity, the energy that freedom brings, freedom from suffering.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Be a light unto oneself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Begin where you are. Read every word, every phrase, every paragraph of the mind, as it operates through thought.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

But if one observes, one will see that the body has its own intelligence; it requires a great deal of intelligence to observe the intelligence of the body.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

But there’s a sacredness which is not of thought, nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought. Thought cannot formulate it. But there’s a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Depuis des siècles, nous nous faisons alimenter par nos maîtres, par deviennent automatiques. Nous pouvons facilement le constater
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do not think about yourself, but be aware of the thought, emotion, or action that makes you think of yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree’, or `that is a banyan tree’, the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do you want to know what my secret is? I don’t mind what happens.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself. There is fear of what happened yesterday in relation to the possibility of its repetition tomorrow; there is always a fixed point from which relationship takes place.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Find out for yourself what are the possesions and ideals that you do not desire. By knowing what you do not want, by elimination, you will unburden the mind, and only then will it understand the essential which is ever there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something, and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happy is the man who is nothing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Human beings, each one, right through the world, go through great agonies, the more sensitive, the more alert, the more observant, the greater the suffering, the anxiety, the extraordinary sense of insoluble problems.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. … The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I think that will be enough, won’t it?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If there is no order in your relationship with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with your neighbour – whether that neighbour is near or very far away – forget about meditation…
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either they key or the door to open, except yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man, and in it is all the becoming, the battle of life, the agony and fear. Meditation is the ending of this space, the ending of the me.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience – to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears – and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is only in alert silence that truth can be.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It’s strange that though every experience, state, is utterly different, it is still the same movement; though it seems to change, it is still the changeless.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love is a state of being, and in that state, the ‘me’, with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the ‘me’, whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Most of us waste this extraordinary thing called life. We have lived forty or sixty years, have gone to the office, engaged ourselves in social activity, escaping in various forms, and at the end of it, we have nothing but an empty, dull, stupid life, a wasted life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Order cannot possibly be brought about through conformity to a pattern, under any circumstances.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Passion is a rather frightening thing because if you have passion you don’t know where it will take you.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The end is the beginning of all things, suppressed and hidden, awaiting to be released through the rhythm of pain and pleasure.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The ending is the beginning, and the beginning is the first step, and the first step is the only step.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The flowering of love is meditation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The mind has to be empty to see clearly.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end – you don’t come to an achievement, you don’t come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The observer is the observed.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The significance of life is living.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage.It’s only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty,and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The word ‘innocence’ means a mind that is incapable of being hurt.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply – aware.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To ask the ‘right’ question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To look is important. We look to immediate things and out of immediate necessities to the future, coloured by the past. Our seeing is very limited and our eyes are accustomed to near things.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine…
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect … Your have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is more in the process than in the result.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young – not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age – and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

We want to make life permanent, but in doing so we go against nature, and there lies our pain. Only the mind which is always moving, without resting places and fixed ideas, can be in tune with life and therefore joyful.
What has validity is your living, not what happens tomorrow.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When we suffer we have made it into a personal affair. We shut out all the suffering of mankind.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Why do you want to read others’ books when there is the book of yourself?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Woke up this morning, rather early, with a sense of a mind that had penetrated into unknown depths. It was as though the mind itself was going into itself, deeply and widely and the journey seemed to have been without movement. And there was this experience of immensity in abundance and a richness that was incorruptible.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You can only be afraid of what you think you know.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You must look most intimately and discover for yourself; then it is your own, not somebody else’s, not something that you have been told, because there is no teacher and no follower.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Thoughts and reflections on religion. Ideas, quotes, and critiques from various authors on various aspects of the religious phenomenon and its impact on society.

The ancient religions, with their sublime and ridiculous, good-natured and cruel symbols, did not fall from the sky, but were born in this human soul, the same soul that still lives within us today. All those things, their primordial forms, live within us and can at any moment assail us with destructive force, that is, in the form of mass suggestion, against which the individual is defenseless.
Carl Gustav Jung

A nation that displays the shitty faces of poor religious idiots on the walls of its cities must by strict logic necessarily be destroyed, never mind the international law of stupidity.
Carl William Brown

Even if only half-believed, the religious promise serves many as a soothing remedy for the anticipated pain of our moral perdition. Given the numbing benefit it provides, believers ignore its improbability and negotiate their daily conduct as best they can with the prohibitions and rules promulgated by priests, proclaimed administrators of the theological remedy.
Fernando Savater

Call your opinions your creed, and you will change them every week. Make your creed simply and broadly out of the revelation of God, and you will keep it to the end.
Phillips Brooks

Progressive intellectuals spent decades of centuries freeing themselves from the imbecility of the Catholic religion, only to end up supporting the stupidity of Islam and its fanatical puppets.
Carl William Brown

A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; – nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Pope is none other than the president of that huge Vatican industry that has made the Catholic religion its great consumer product.
Carl William Brown

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Albert Einstein

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.
Ludwig Feuerbach

In the past, to subjugate the people, the powerful used force, laws and religion; now, they also have football and television.
Carl William Brown

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
Sigmund Freud

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former – of the corruption of the will.
Alexander Herzen

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
Aldous Huxley

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
C. S. Lewis

But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy?
Harriet Martineau

I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

There are no people in the world I like better than priests; they receive their monthly check from the curia, receive money for every funeral, wedding, or baptism, accept offerings for every special Mass, and just to make ends meet, they receive alms and donations during various liturgies. They then don’t let various donations and gifts slip by, and they pursue every possible and hypothetical inheritance with fervent Christian zeal. Finally, they don’t mind raising funds with envelopes, bulletins, and various celebrations for the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of their houses of worship and their parishes. Now, it would be enough to allow them to marry, and far from the defection of vocations, they should instead hold public competitions.
Carl William Brown

Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it, ought to be treated as a common enemy.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

As each Sister is to become a Co-Worker of Christ in the slums, each ought to understand what God and the Missionaries of Charity expect from her. Let Christ radiate and live his life in her and through her in the slums. Let the poor, seeing her, be drawn to Christ and invite him to enter their homes and their lives. Let the sick and suffering find in her a real angel of comfort and consolation. Let the little ones of the streets cling to her because she reminds them of him, the friend of the little ones.
Mother Teresa

When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
Gerard De Nerval

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.
John Henry Newman

Nonfiction, aphoristic, and humorous literature seeks to provide humanity with a method and logic so that, by overcoming stupidity and ignorance, man can organize his life in the best possible way. This is the great existential utopia that elevates this discipline above both science and religion and makes it a true philanthropic practice.
Carl William Brown

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architectural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
Reinhold Niebuhr

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
George Bernard Shaw

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.
Paul Tillich

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.
Mark Twain

Only happy people can learn. Only happy people can teach. Our religion should put a sparkle in our eyes and a tone in our voice, and a spring in our step that bears witness of our faith and confidence in the goodness of God.
Author Unknown

Not every religion has to have St. Augustine’s attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn’t prevent it being a religious ceremony.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
Matthew Arnold

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty – necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
James Baldwin

With two thousand years of Christianity behind him… a man can’t see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol – cross or crescent or whatever – that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.
William Faulkner

Real Christianity is lovely. There is a quality about a Spirit-filled, radiant Christian that draws and attracts others and causes them to “enjoy favor with all the people.” The truth is that the gospel is not nearly as offensive as some of its proponents!
O. S. Hawkins

Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer… its anti-intellectualism… its puerile hymns… and its faith-healing… are made to order for King Kid America.
Florence E. King

The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
Rudyard Kipling

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
C. S. Lewis

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
Thomas B. Macaulay

He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that, though it is not true, it has been found necessary to invent it.
Hector Hugh Munro

Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them – I can write in letters which make even the blind see. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty – I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Many people profess Christianity. Very few live it – almost none. And when you live it people may think you’re crazy. It has been truthfully said that the world is equally shocked by one who repudiates Christianity as by one who practices it.
Peace Pilgrim

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this — that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.
Edgar Allan Poe

In England, a country that had never looked favorably on the Catholic religion, censorship of books and pamphlets was abolished in 1692. In Italy, a nation dominated and oppressed by Catholicism, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake a few years earlier, along with Galileo’s accusations of heresy, resulting in the forced abjuration of his theories. This fact alone allows us to appreciate the difference in freedom, tolerance, and common sense between the two nations.
Carl William Brown

Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge. Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again – I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
John Updike

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries, has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
Simone Weil

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination — everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
John Adams

Our religion is itself profoundly sad – a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man’s own language – so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
Charles Baudelaire

The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is “what should be.” Now, if you’re taught to live up to a “what should be” that never existed – only an occult superstition, no proof of this “should be” – then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!
Lenny Bruce

It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, — there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.
Lord Byron

In preparation for the Jubilee of 2000, theologians of the Catholic Church are in the mood for major reforms and are preparing epochal changes that will significantly shape the new religion of the third millennium. For example, they have decided to change some words of the Pater Nostrum, and there is no doubt that this innovation will only reinvigorate the spirit and hope of our religious, encouraging them to walk ever more admirably along the path of faith, charity, and holiness; in a word, the path of stupidity.
Carl William Brown

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race — the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be, and remain, slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.
Mark Twain

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
Mary McCarthy

Although every organized patriarchal religion works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny to the myth of woman-hate, woman-fear, and woman-evil, the Roman Catholic Church also carries the immense power of very directly affecting women’s lives everywhere by its stand against birth control and abortion, and by its use of skillful and wealthy lobbies to prevent legislative change. It is an obscenity — an all-male hierarchy, celibate or not, that presumes to rule on the lives and bodies of millions of women.
Robin Morgan

It is indolence… Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.
Jane Austen

We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.
John Cheever

Those who marry God can become domesticated too — it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria ” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves — it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.
Graham Greene

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.
William Hazlitt

Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labor, and we will give you work.
Sean O’Casey

If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.
Sean O’Casey

The root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian Church has suffered, has been because of the effort of men to earn, rather than receive their salvation; and the reason preaching is so commonly ineffective is, that it often calls on people to work for God rather than letting God work through them.
John Ruskin

A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone.
John Selden

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say “I know” instead of “I am learning,” and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.
George Bernard Shaw

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift

One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.
A. W. Tozer

A group touring Westminster Abbey in London heard the guide list the famous people buried within its walls. During a momentary silence a little old lady’s voice blurted out loud and clear, “Anybody been saved here lately?”
Author Unknown

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share.
Alice Walker

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.
James Baldwin

We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically. We can become a dynamic equilibrium, a harmony of many different elements, in which the whole will be greater than all its parts and greater than any society the world has seen before. It can still happen.
Shirley Chisholm

Once the visitor was told rather repetitively that this city was the melting pot; never before in history had so many people of such varied languages, customs, colors and culinary habits lived so amicably together. Although New York remains peaceful by most standards, this self-congratulation is now less often heard, since it was discovered some years ago that racial harmony depended unduly on the willingness of the blacks to do for the other races the meanest jobs at the lowest wages and then to return to live by themselves in the worst slums.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity — an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.
Hubert H. Humphrey

It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.
Malcolm X

O unbelievers, I serve not what you serve and you are not serving what I serve, nor am I serving what you have served, neither are you serving what I serve. To you your religion, and to me my religion!
Qur’an

If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.
Alexis De Tocqueville

Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: “the Son, O how unlike the Father!” First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.
William Blake

None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.
Lydia M. Child

No man ever loved like Jesus. He taught the blind to see and the dumb to speak. He died on the cross to save us. He bore our sins. And now God says, “Because He did, I can forgive you.”
Billy Graham

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.
Billy Graham

No one else holds or has held the place in the heart of the world, which Jesus holds. Other gods have been as devoutly worshipped; no other man has been so devoutly loved.
John Knox

There is but one love of Jesus, as there is but one person in the poor — Jesus. We take vows of chastity to love Christ with undivided love; to be able to love him with undivided love we take a vow of poverty which frees us from all material possessions, and with that freedom we can love him with undivided love, and from this vow of undivided love we surrender ourselves totally to him in the person who takes his place.
Mother Teresa

God speaks to me not through the thunder and the earthquake, nor through the ocean and the stars, but through the Son of Man, and speaks in a language adapted to my imperfect sight and hearing.
William Lyon Phelps

Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?
Ernest Renan

Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.
Ernest Renan

Two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet – a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call divine.
Frederick W. Robertson

I am pretty sure that we err in treating these sayings as paradoxes. It would be nearer the truth to say that it is life itself which is paradoxical and that the sayings of Jesus are simply a recognition of that fact.
Thomas Taylor

Somewhere in the bible it say Jesus hair was like lamb’s wool, I say. Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he’d have to have it conked before anybody paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about their God is that his hair kinky.
Alice Walker

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.
James Baldwin

What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!
William Blake

Institutions – government, churches, industries, and the like – have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.
Charles Horton Cooley

Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
Lewis H. Lapham

Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won’t last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.
D. H. Lawrence

Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy. Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions.
Wright C. Mills

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.
Henry David Thoreau

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