“I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
“God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Everything is Spiritual. 
Albert Einstein is on record as saying that he did not believe in a personal God. He said:
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Einstein also said:
“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.”
The word ‘God’ is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.”
― Albert Einstein letter to Erik Gutkind Jan. 3, 1954
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🙂 Reminded me of some things I read for a class in school. .
48 pages down – focus on 15th century Renaissance arts and culture – curious the universal lessons we could benefit from spiritual in studying this specific period. The humanist perspective remains relevant and unifying – scholars viewing God in the world and beauty around – Marsilio Ficino, philosopher ‘Conceived beauty in the things of tis world as God’s means of making himself manifest to humankind. The contemplation and study of beauty in nature – and all things – was a form of worship, a manifestation of the divine or spiritual love….Like erotic love, spiritual love is inspired by beauty, but spiritual love moves beyond the physical to an intellectual plane and, eventually to such an elevated spiritual level that it results in soul’s union with God.’
Paraphrasing from Pico della Mirandola’s ‘Oranation on the Dignity of Man’
Humankind serves as a link between the lower orders aof nature, including animals, and the higher spiritual orders, of which angels are a part. . Human beings possess free will; they can make for themselves what they wish. Though linked to the lower order of matter, they are capable of rising to the higher realm of spirit and ultimately being united with God. Each persons destiny is a matter of individual choice.
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