Huston Smith

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

“Might we not say that the mind is in some deep way bigger than the brain?”

“Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion.”

“You can be a patriot and a critic.”

“The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The problem of the world is a problem of love.”

“The deepest truths are the ones that are the hardest to put into words.”

“To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.”

“Every civilization is a fruit from the sturdy tree of a great religion.”

“The way of the essentialist is to select from history what is good and then thank God that you are not like other men.”

“The problem is not to find the answer, it's to face the answer.”

“We are born into a world of spiritual mediocrity. We must rise above it.”

“Awe is the appropriate response to the universe.”

“The West is in the world, but not of it. It is a world apart, a world of its own, with a different spiritual axis.”

“The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits.”

“It is possible to climb life's mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge.”