There's a way to accomplish the separation of church and state and at the same time accomplish the social objective of having America become a hopeful place and loving place.
The first thing that a person finds in life and the last to which he holds out his hand, and the most precious that he possess, even if he does not realize it, is family life.
You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
...The God I know is one that promotes peace and freedom. But I get great sustenance from my personal relationship. That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way. Because one of the great admonitions in the Good Book is, don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I've got a log in my own.
Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand--that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe.
I think church and state should remain entirely separate at all costs, and that the decision of religious marriage should be of each faith to debate and decide free of political influence.
Children of those ancient Aryans, through the grace of the Lord may you have the same pride, may that faith in your ancestors come into your blood, may it become a part and parcel of your lives, may it work towards the salvation of the world!
In your intercourse with sects, the sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian belief belong to the Church; but the faith of the individual, centred in his heart, is, or may be, collateral to them. Faith is subjective.
Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in the underlying sameness and oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic ideal.
A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty nearly like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love.
"I should have more faith," he said; "I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation."
"Americans do not presume to equate God's purposes with any purpose of our own...."[Prayer] teaches us to trust, to accept that God's plan unfolds in his time, not our own.
Straight away, remove yourself from the field of spiritual progression , stay away from contemplation and skillful discourse, do not do research or meditate on the divinities, and stop concentrating and reciting textbooks! Tell me, what is the absolute nature of reality which allows no room for doubt? Listen carefully! Stop holding on to this or that, inhabit your true absolute nature, and peacefully enjoy the essence of what it is to be alive!