Latest Huston Smith Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death.

  Huston Smith

  People, Fear Of Death

• Historically, religion has given people another world to live in, a world more adaptive to the human spirit. As a student of world religions, I see religion as the winnower of the wisdom of the human race. Of course, not everything about these religions is wise. Their social patterns, for example - master-slave, caste, and gender relations - have been adopted from the mores of their time. But in their view of the nature of reality, there is nothing in either modernity or postmodernity that rivals them.

  Huston Smith

  Wise, Reality, People

• the heart of religion is not altered states but altered traits of character. For me, then, the test of a substance's religious worth or validity is not what kind of far-out experience it can produce, but is the life improved by its use? That's the test. Now, on that score, if you remove the "religious cocoon," the experiences don't seem to have much in the way of discernible, traceable effects.

  Huston Smith

  Religious, Heart, Character

• I would not say that ethical behavior is not possible for the atheist or agnostic. It is. A couple of pretty good examples are Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, I will have to say that if we take the human lot as a whole, these two men must be seen as exceptions.

  Huston Smith

  Atheist, Couple, Men

• I don't want to justify religion in terms of its benefits to us. I believe that, on balance, it does a lot of bad things, too - a tremendous amount. But I don't think that the final justification of religion is the good it does for people. I think the final justification is that it's true, and truth takes priority over consequences. Religion helps us deal with what is most important to the human spirit: values, meaning, purpose, and quality.

  Huston Smith

  Believe, Thinking, People

• The New Age movement looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for belief. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity. How deep does New Age go? Has it come to terms with radical evil? More, I am not sure how much social conscience there is in New Age thinking.

  Huston Smith

  Optimistic, Thinking, Evil

• People are not losing their religious needs, but they are going to three places to get their needs met. One is to conservative churches, which, for all their social benightedness, nevertheless do present their congregations with a different view of reality. Second, they are going to Asian religions. Third, they are going to the New Age, which when I'm feeling cynical I refer to as "New Age frivolity," because some of it is rather flaky.

  Huston Smith

  Religious, Reality, People

  "The World of Religion According to Huston Smith". Interview With Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. November/December 1997.

• The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules.

  Huston Smith

  Teacher, Forbidden, Western

• I come from a missionary family - I grew up in China - and in my case, my religious upbringing was positive. Of course, not everyone has this experience. I know many of my students are what I have come to think of as wounded Christians or wounded Jews. What came through to them was dogmatism and moralism, and it rubbed them the wrong way.

  Huston Smith

  Christian, Religious, Thinking

• My body was born into the - baptized in the Methodist church, and it will be buried in the Methodist Church. Meanwhile, I have a soul. And my soul cannot be confined to any human institution.

  Huston Smith

  Baptized In, Soul, Church

  Source: www.npr.org

• It would be good if we bore one another's burdens.

  Huston Smith

  Would Be, Burden, Be Good

  "The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life". Book by Huston Smith, 2003.

• I have a body and I have a soul. And my body belongs to the faith - in fact, the church - into which it was born, the Methodist Church.

  Huston Smith

  Soul, Church, Body

  Source: www.npr.org

• The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.

  Huston Smith

  Technique, Answers, Firsts

  Source: www.npr.org

• What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.

  Huston Smith

  Sickness, Distraction

  "Remembering Huston Smith, Noted 'World's Religions' Scholar". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, wvik.org. January 4, 2017.

• The word translated, koan, it means a problem. But it's a very special problem. And to strip it down to the way it works, you are given a problem which has no rational solution. There is a contradiction built into it. One standard - one is this is the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping? And so on. All right, so the first thing is that it brings your rational mind to an impasse.

  Huston Smith

  Mean, Hands, Two

  Source: www.npr.org

• If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.

  Huston Smith

  Feet, Water, Drilling

  Source: www.npr.org