Leaders of humanist thought conclude …

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “Try to be a little kinder.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), British novelist and essayist

All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins, and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.
—Seneca (4? bc– 65 ad), Spanish-born Roman statesman, philosopher, and dramatist

All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.
—Socrates (469–399 BC), Greek philosopher

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), British philosopher and political theorist; last words
   
The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Austrian physician and founder of psychoanalysis

Men and women of faith say …

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.
—George Macdonald (1824–1905), Scottish novelist and poet

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
—G.C. Lichtenberg (1742–1799), German physicist and writer

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), French priest, paleontologist, and theologian

Having a clear faith … is often labeled as fundamentalism. Yet relativism—that is, letting oneself be carried here and there by any wind of doctrine—appears as the sole attitude good enough for modern times.
—Pope Benedict XVI

There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality. All else is immorality.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th president of the United States

If you begin to live life looking for the God that is all around you, every moment becomes a prayer.
—Frank Bianco, U.S. journalist and photographer

You must live with people to know their problems, and live with God in order to solve them.
—P.T. Forsyth (1848–1921), British clergyman

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
—C.S. Lewis (1898–1963), Irish-born British critic, scholar, and novelist

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), British writer

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
—Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997), Albanian nun and Nobel laureate

Faith is a higher faculty than reason.
—Henry Christopher Bailey (1878–1961), British writer

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a gift from God.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French philosopher and mathematician