Huston Smith Quotes

When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.
Huston Smith

Made, Read, Found

The most powerful moral influence is example.
Huston Smith

Powerful, Moral, Influence

Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.
Huston Smith

Religion, Art, Society

God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
Huston Smith

God, Jesus, Defined

I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form.
Huston Smith

Life, God, Human

Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
Huston Smith

Different, Same, Put

Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.
Huston Smith

Knowledge, Dead, Hand

First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.
Huston Smith

Religion, Political, Soul

Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it.
Huston Smith

God, Mind, Human

I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.
Huston Smith

American, Granted, Taking

I had assumed that Bush's seemingly inflexible policy to support Sharon was for political reasons of his getting elected. But as to whether he really believes his actions are going to hasten the day of the final conflict, I do not know.
Huston Smith

Political, Getting, Support

I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication.
Huston Smith

Long, Mean, Almost

I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
Huston Smith

God, History, Spiritual

I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.
Huston Smith

Faith, Great, Done

In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
Huston Smith

Nature, Rather, Ought

In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
Huston Smith

Live, Lives, Order

It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.
Huston Smith

Religion, Different, Said

It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us.
Huston Smith

Art, Difficult, Often

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.
Huston Smith

Truth, Business, Teacher

Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.
Huston Smith

Science, Dark, Woods

Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self.
Huston Smith

Religion, Reality, Self

So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.
Huston Smith

Justice, Religious, Morality

The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.
Huston Smith

Crisis, Political, Ways

The faith I was born into formed me.
Huston Smith

Faith, Born, Formed

The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them.
Huston Smith

Nature, Human, Social

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Theologian

Born: May 31, 1919

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