Secular Quotations

My parents were secular. I am an atheist.

America's freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, offers every wisdom tradition an opportunity to address our soul-deep needs: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism among others.

It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980.

When 'Christians' cite the Bible as the basis for secular policies, they must explain why they believe Muslims in the Middle East are evil for doing the same with the Koran.

My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.

What if this world of ours is not based on presumptions of magic? What if this world is really 'What we see is what we get'... Would that be so bad? ... There is a secular magic in everything around us. The world is beautiful. We have love; we should take care of each other. That is not a frightening concept for any parent to deliver to a child.

Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.

Politics in America is the binding secular religion.

In all God's plans for human redemption, He proposes that men pray. The men are to pray in every place, in the church, in the closet, in the home, on sacred days and on secular days.

Secular thinkers have no more been able to work free of the centuries-old Judeo-Christian culture than Christian theologians were able to work free of their inheritance of classical and pagan thought. The process... has not been the deletion and replacement of religious ideas but rather the assimilation and reinterpretation of religious ideas.

The road to the sacred leads through the secular.

When I was a kid, we weren't really supposed to listen to secular music. But one day, I found a 'Led Zeppelin IV' cassette tape in the garage, and it was just amazing-sounding music, not like anything I'd heard before. I remember thinking: 'Well, if God created music, why is his music in church not as good as this?'

I see little difference in the attitudes of those who consider themselves Christian and those who are openly secular and agnostic. Most Christian citizenship appears to be clearly right here - on this little bit of very unreal estate.

Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world - Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

I've liked being Jewish in America - there's a secular version of Jewishness there that's more about bagels and jokes than going to synagogues.

Anti-Christian ideology has permeated much of the secular news media, and so often Biblical Christians are mocked, misrepresented or attacked for what they believe by anti-Christian agenda driven reporters.

I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

Two people have been really liberating in my mind; one is Wittgenstein and the other is Burke. I read Burke before he was a secular saint, before everyone was reading him.

Sports are the ultimate secular religion. Instead of being worried about whether your kids will be okay or how your job is going, you have your team, and you can focus all of your angst and your hopes and dreams on your team. I am in no way saying it always relieves any of this!

As Indians, we take great pride in the fact that we are a progressive nation. We are proud of our democracy, our secular values as well as our entrepreneurial spirit. We are appalled by the harsh laws that govern women's lives in Taliban-dominated lands. Yet we turn a blind eye to the injustices that our own society continues to heap upon women.

A desire to rescue secular America from fallen grace has driven conservative evangelicals at least since the 1970s, when Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority as a vehicle for conservative Christians to muscle their way into national politics.

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.

'Snow' is my most popular book in the United States. But in Turkey, it was not as popular as 'My Name is Red,' or even 'The Museum of Innocence,' because the secular leaders didn't want this bourgeois Orhan trying to understand these head-scarf girls.

Sweden is an open, liberal, secular and democratic country. We strive towards achieving equality; we are forward-looking and refuse to be pulled back by social constructs such as religion.

As far as the public is concerned, India is amazingly secular.

The co-existence of religious values in the lives of individuals and secular rules in the governance of the state should be clearly defined.

Christians - at least Christians in a liberal democracy - have accepted, after Thomas Hobbes, that they must obey the secular rule of law; that there must be a separation of church and state.

The yeshiva where I studied considers itself modern Orthodox, not ultra-Orthodox. We followed a rigorous secular curriculum alongside traditional Talmud and Bible study.

We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow.

I do believe God has given me an incredible opportunity and a platform in a secular environment but still to take a stand for Christ and being a blessing to believers.

It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.

Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government - the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more.

Can a secular artist be used as a vessel to bring souls to Christ? Of course... this is God we are talking about!

Secular cycles are the long periods - as long as decades - that come to define each market era. These cycles alternate between long-term bull and bear markets.

I believe that the appearance of God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in 1820 to Joseph Smith unlocked the heavens not only to the great spiritual knowledge revealed in this dispensation but also to secular knowledge.

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion.

While largely unnoticed by investors, global urbanization is going to be one of the most powerful and important trends. The world's resource base confronts unprecedented demand as a new urban world unfolds. Against this backdrop, the secular bull market in energy and basic materials is just beginning.

Writing about prayer to a secular audience is tap-dancing on the radio. I want to say, 'Gee whiz, isn't this great,' and have everyone's head cocked like the RCA dog.

We want to provoke heat and debate and a closer look at the man and leader in full, not just the leader who has been raised to secular sainthood.

I've never really separated out the spiritual and the secular.

We have practically all the family names, and they are members of a current within Hizb ut-Tahrir that in Andijon are called Akramiya, ... Their main purpose is to turn over the existing constitutional structure, to turn over the power in different places and found what is called a caliphate, that would unite all Islamites. The movement was categorically against all sorts of constitutional institutions, against a secular development of the events. That is their purpose.

There is a steady migration of recruitment dollars going online, ... Employment figures are trading catalysts but this is a secular growth story, not a cyclical one, so month-to-month employment numbers are less and less relevant.

When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with secular democracy.

We had been searching and hoping for some solution for the College for years. Now I know that Howards a more secular kind of guy. He told me once that its sometimes hard to distinguish between praying and whining, but this transformation is precisely what many of us have prayed for each in our own way and those prayers have been answered.

The price of gold was fixed at $35 an ounce in 1934, but by the time the U.S. got through the Korean War, the Vietnam war, with all the associated secular inflation, the price level had gone up nearly three times.

There are people in our world today and unfortunately in our political system, they do not believe in evil. They have the modern, western, secular mind set. They don't believe evil exists. They are exactly the ones who are in danger of getting blindsided by evil. Because they're not prepared for it.

Secular concerns that have weighed on our stock are overblown. Secular trends warrant us accelerating the program.

Since the end of the Cold War, metropolitan elites everywhere have identified progress and modernity with the cornucopia of global capitalism, the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes and the secular ethic of consumerism.

Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

More recently, as faith gave way to materialism, anti-Semitism assumed a secular mode, harnessing itself to the dominant ideologies of both the Left and the Right.

Obviously, the economy ails from important secular imbalances; there's a lot to be concerned about. But the cyclical forces indicate that, at least over the coming quarters, visibility is high.

People will look at it and not see some kind of secular document they will see a holy document and holy documents should not be on public property.

One of the features of a democracy is the disentanglement of the sacred from the secular because in religiously pluralistic countries, no one can legitimately claim special status by faith membership.

I grew up pretty secular. I went to public school, and all the Jews that I knew, none of them were religious. While probably half of my friends were Jewish, they were all secular Jews. We went to Hebrew school, we knew we were Jewish, but it wasn't a major part of our existence.

If we had to forecast (and we do), we believe a range of 3 to 4½ percent for 10-year nominal Treasuries will prevail during most of our secular timeframe,

I'd like the United States to become what it was always meant to be, which is a secular nation - more publicly committed to reason, to improving understanding, and promoting education.

I do not think they are asking for respect in this case. They want me to follow one of their taboos in the public domain. And I think there's a very fundamental principle in secular society that you cannot insist on everybody paying special attention to your religious feelings.

I come from an almost wholly secular background and have no quarrel with religion.

Because secular artists participate, somebody coming might not even go to church.

for speech that was a ... secular message or an invocation. So it's neutral on its face. It says, 'Say whatever you want to say.'

I don't think it's hypothetical whether or not it's a good idea to topple secular dictators in the Middle East and hope to get a good outcome and hope that stability comes thereafter.

For most of the 20th century, the secular perspective moved forward and was in the ascendancy. Recently however, conservative Christians have been on the offensive, recovering some of that lost ground.

For more than 30 years, ... the settlers' dream has overwhelmed the dream of secular Israelis. Day in and day out, the vision of Greater Israel and the reign of the Messiah crushed the hope of being a free people and building a just society.

God directed me to do for gospel music what I'd been doing for the secular music. I had no peace with the secular side; there was something else tugging at me.

He has treated them as good as non-existent and has not even made a mention of these three industries. It is very unfortunate and needs to be taken note of. It is a secular party that will take up social causes from time to time.

We've been thinking that the Nasdaq, as an index, would likely outperform a lot of the other indexes this year. It's a lot about secular growth. We're seeing growth in technology. And for the most part, it's been a tech year.

Gold continues to defy the bears, skeptics and even ardent bulls all of whom continue to pay little or no attention to one of the most powerful factors driving the secular bull market.

I think Intel is still very good. It's done very well, but it is still a very, very strong story, ... I think Bank One is a very strong recovery story in the financial area. That usually does well as we see an economic recovery. Weyerhaeuser is in the forest products industry. A great secular story there in the next five to 10 years as home building picks up with the baby boomers getting older and the baby busters are getting bigger.

It is open. It will remain secular and apolitical.

People are confusing some of the normal seasonal slowdown we get in June with being some type of secular change in the environment.

Our goal was to create a record that would hold up in both secular and Christian camps,

Our view on satellite radio remains bullish, and we believe that pay-radio represents a rare opportunity to capture secular growth as an investor and that duopoly economics will benefit returns over time.

Our argument is going to be that the removal of the monument is the systematic and continuing eradication of God from the public square, and from society, and replacing God with the secular humanism that has been advocated in the lawsuit brought against Chief Justice Moore,

Some of these forces have gained strength because of a lack of other alternatives. For decades the Middle East has been a political desert. . . . In much of the Muslim world Islam became the language of political opposition because it was the only language that could not be censored. This pattern, of dictators using religious groups to destroy the secular opposition, has played out in virtually every Arab country.

Terrorist groupings of a secular character and with only a regional sphere of activity have largely been pushed into the background. Only a few of the secular groupings still pose a serious threat.

I'm in absolutely no doubt that the benefits will follow from this enlargement and bring a strong secular state which happens to have a Muslim majority into the European Union,

We live in secular world now, but most of our art and culture is rooted in religion.

The armed forces are professional, apolitical, and secular and the most disciplined force the country has today... We would not like to include (the armed forces) in such a type of survey, (but) in the case of other departments and ministries such a study will continue.

You'll hear Christians being interviewed from time-to-time, but you won't hear us pray on-air. It's a Christian guy hosting a secular show.

We believe the secular bull market which began in 2000 will last until 2020. Navigation of this secular bull market will continue to be challenging and volatile.

Well people used to tease me and say, 'Oh, you're a Christian Bob Dylan'. And then when Dylan became a Christian in my Bible study, they'd say to him, 'Oh you're a secular Larry Norman.'

We need to focus on schools; the overcrowding issues that are a big problem here in Queens, and the lack of supplies and teachers, but also take responsibility for the children outside the public school system, ... We need to make nurses available for parochial schools, yeshivas and other secular institutions, as well as provide funding for computers and software.

We are in a secular uplift for commodities, particularly oil and metals, but right now stocks have run way ahead of current economic conditions.

thoughtful, secular approach to the chairmanship, focused on the long-term evolution of the U.S. and the global economy.

We start out doing spiritual music for the church band. Then, we send the rest of the band home and work on secular stuff.

The secular Jew is a figment; when a Jew becomes a secular person he is no longer a Jew.

We weren't allowed to have secular music in the house growing up. I was home-schooled, and gospel was the only choice we had.

To a very large degree, the significant compression in Dell's valuation over the past 18 months already discounts this secular slowing, with price-to-trailing revenue now at 2.5X, down from upwards of 5-6X not too long ago, ... Accordingly, our upgrade of the shares in July and this downgrade cannot be more ill-timed.

We think the days of buy-and-hold are over. It's been an 18-year, uninterrupted secular bull market. And when that ends, you get a secular bear market.

Yet you can make good money in that environment. It just takes a different strategy; you try to hold a core bunch of stocks you think are in secular bull markets and trade at inflection points.

While we cannot be certain, we continue to believe it is highly unlikely that HP would acquire Kodak, especially given HP's current focus on fixing its own business. The areas that Kodak gains profits from -- film, X-ray film, entertainment film, laser imagers -- are in secular decline.

The Orthodox believe in Jewish literacy, and most of the rest of us couldn't care less. Rabbis and other creatures have a monopoly on Judaism. This is a turnoff in a world that is increasingly secular and that has turned away from religion. Jews are simply turning away from Judaism.

Though it is honorable to take the religious public's feelings into consideration, it is no less important to take into account the secular public, which will spend long hours in a traffic jam. As if the unprecedented increase in gasoline prices isn't enough, now car owners will have to waste their precious time due to Mr. Sharon's coalition considerations.

You look at a surgeon as you would a secular priest, almost, if it's your child, if it's your sister on the operating table. That was an idea that very much has interested me and I've wanted to explore for some time.

We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.

Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.

Every enlargement that has taken place within the European Union has made both the existing and the new member states stronger and more prosperous, ... I'm in absolutely no doubt that the benefits will follow from this enlargement and bring a strong secular state which happens to have a Muslim majority into the European Union.

As if he were a man of a certain kind of secular faith,

Congress and other secular parties should be concerned about these developments.

FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity.