"Our principle is, and our
practices have always been, to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness
and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends
to the peace of all...All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny,
with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any
end, or under any pretence whatsoever..." -- George
Fox
“My generation was
bold enough to question many things and to seek spirituality over religion. We
haven’t succeeded in overthrowing the old order yet, and maybe there are some
meanings to be found in my story about coming of age spiritually in the latter
half of the twentieth century.” -- Matthew
Fox
Compassion
is the essence of Jesus’ teaching, and indeed of the teaching of all great spiritual
figures from Mohammed to Isaiah, from Lao Tzu to Chief Seattle. Yet compassion
has been sentimentalized and severed from its relationship to justice-making and
celebration. Creation Spirituality links the struggle for justice with the yearning
for mysticism. -- Matthew
Fox
We
were made for something cosmic and will not fit peacefully into anything much
smaller. And when we try to build our lives around anything much smaller than
cosmos we become grotesque, and our institutions, be they religious or familial
or educational or governmental are asked to do too much. They become misshapen
and malformed and turn into instruments of cosmic and personal destruction.
-- Matthew Fox
*
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love:
where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair,
hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. --
Saint Francis of Assisi
*
Every time that religion has identified itself or entangled itself with a particular
political movement or a particular government, religion has been harmed by that.
I see religion as a powerful positive healing force for this nation and the world.
But that force is blunted, weakened, compromised inestimably, if we turn religion
into a tool for advancing political strategy; if we make it a matter of how to
win political office; if we treat it as anything other than a sacred part of life
from which we ought to draw sustenance and values and strength for living courageously
as good citizens. -- C.
Welton Gaddy
*
"Every religion contains, in varying degrees, elements of the soft and the hard.
For the sake of world peace, dialogue within religions and among them must strengthen
the softer aspects." -- Johan
Galtung
*
“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty.
I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source.
I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.”
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
It
is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read
sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we
are to respect others' religions as we would have
them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's
religions is a sacred duty.
-- Mohandas
Gandhi
*
“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship.
I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.
My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that
Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.”
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
*
Interfaith dialogue is a must today, and the first step in establishing it is
forgetting the past, ignoring polemical arguments, and giving precedence to common
points, which far outnumber polemical ones. -- M.
Fethullah Gülen
Tolerance,
a term which we sometimes use in place of the words respect, mercy, generosity,
or forbearance, is the most essential element of moral systems; it is a very important
source of spiritual discipline and a celestial virtue of perfected people. --
M. Fethullah Gülen
