“In as much as our God is one God and the Creator of all mankind, He provides for and protects all. We acknowledge Him as a God of kindness, justice and mercy. Why then should we, His children and followers, war and fight, bringing sorrow and grief into the hearts of each other? God is loving and merciful. His intention in religion has ever been the bond of unity and affinity between human kind.”
Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i leader
“It is as if they have a Supreme Guidance, but there is no way of grasping such a One.
He can certainly act, of that there is no doubt,
but I cannot see his body[…]
There must be some Supreme Ruler who is over them all.”
The Book of Chuang Tzu, Daoist text
“There is one god, named truth, the creator, without fear, without hate, timeless in form, beyond birth, self-existent, (known by) the grace of the Guru.”
Guru Nanak, Founding prophet of Sikhism
“Neither gods nor sages know my origin, for I am the source from which the gods and sages come. Whoever knows me as the Lord of all creation, without birth or beginning, knows the truth and frees himself from all evil.”
The Bhagavad Gita, Hindu scripture
I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.
The New Testament (1 Revelations 1:8)
“In brotherly love there is the experience of union with all men, of human solidarity, of human at-onement. Brotherly love is based on the experience that we are all one. The differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge are negligible in comparison with the identity of the human core common to all men.”
Erich Fromm
“It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”
D.W. Winnicott
“The very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, he has a period of youth because he must play.”
Karl Groos
“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.”
Henri Matisse
“Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.”
Abraham Maslow
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Sir Isaac Newton
“Our true relationships in life are never to the material side of things. Reflect for a moment and you will recognize that you love your child or your garden or a poem because you have worked your way through its exteriority to an interior relationship with it.”
Arthur Zajonc, American Physicist
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
Malcom S. Forbes, Entrepreneur
“[L]ove [is] the Divine energy. This primal love is Gift-love. In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.”
C.S. Lewis, Christian Theologian and Writer
A creed that tells us that we are no more than selfish genes, with nothing in principle to separate us from the animals, in a society whose strongest motivators are money and success, in a universe that came into existence for no reason whatsoever and for no reason will one day cease to be, will never speak as strongly to the human spirit as one that tells us we are in the image and likeness of God in a universe he created in love.
Jonathan Sacks, Jonathan Sacks British Orthodox Rabbi and author
In the end, only three things matter: how much you Loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
Jack Kornfield, American Author
We learn not in the school, but in life.
Seneca
Once you learn to read, you will be forever be free.
Frederick Douglas, Former Slave, Author
“What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, it is the people, it is the people.”
Māori Proverb
Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.
Clayton M. Christensen, Economist & Consultant