The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam.
Abu Bakar Bashir
The co-existence of religious values in the lives of individuals and secular rules in the governance of the state should be clearly defined.
Ahmed Zewail
Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious - but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.
Secularism will not work in Egypt any more than theocracy. What will work is governance that is guided by the Islamic values of the majority with protection of the minority rights.
When I was ordained as a pastor, I walked away from secular music for seven, eight years. It took me that time to learn that God is love.
Al Green
Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the balance sheet. The doers are selling us potted plants and pizzas while the thinkers are a little bit unworldly. Religions both think and do.
Alain de Botton
I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, raid, and learn from.
I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.
Alan Dershowitz
The sad reality is that there are no purely domestic issues in Israel. Issues that would be dealt with by municipalities in other countries - such as how to deal with a dangerous bridge or how to resolve conflicts between religious and secular bus riders - become major international issues when they occur in Israel.
Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: it merely tells us that person is a prudential believer, akin to the person who obeys the command of an all-powerful secular king.
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!
Alex Gibney
I'm very sensitive to the incredibly diverse range of opinions within religious and secular communities, and honestly, I'd appreciate if we focused first on the experiences and dignity of the people.
Alyson Stoner
People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.
Amity Shlaes
Though it is perhaps expected for the bishop of Rome to warn against the idolatry of money, what is striking is how Francis suggests that not only God but also secular politics must outrank economic imperatives.
Anand Giridharadas
What if the slowdown in merger activity isn't cyclical, but secular? What if corporations have learned the lessons of so many companies before them that the odds of a successful merger are no better than 50-50 and probably less? Is it possible that the biggest deals have already been done?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
In a secular age, an authentic miracle must purport to be a hoax, in order to gain credit in the world.
Angela Carter
Especially in a very secular world, we should always stress what is common in the Christian religion.
Angela Merkel
Secularism has no central goal, it's just promoting endless relativism. That's why there is a huge moral drift in the country. Everybody is infallible except the Pope, if you like.
Ann Widdecombe
What I do not like is militant secularism, whereby anything is acceptable as long as it's not Christian.
I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.
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.
In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.
Sam Cooke had a huge influence on me. He left the gospel field at one point and went into the secular, and he had this huge hit, 'You Send Me.' Irma, my older sister, and I heard 'You Send Me' on the radio while we were driving through the South one night. We had to stop the car. We got out and danced around the car out on the highway.
The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's traditionalist-nationalist rhetoric, which blames secularism, diversity and internationalism for the weakening of Western democracies, gives voice to the grievances that American hate groups have felt for so long.
If India is not secular, then India is not India at all.
Let no one challenge India's secularism.
India was secular even when Muslims hadn't come here and Christians hadn't set foot on this soil. It is not as if India became secular after they came. They came with their own modes of worship, and they, too, were given a place of honor and respect. They had the freedom to worship God as per their wish and inclination.
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.
I think, as a secular woman who heads a religious party and lives in Tel Aviv, we don't have so many problems on religion and state. Politicians, like Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman, are trying to create these problems for all different reasons and interests in order to get more votes.
The arrogance of secular Jews regarding the ultra-Orthodox community and their attempt to impose on it a different lifestyle is inappropriate.
Tel Aviv was established in 1909 by a group of secular Jewish families; Judaism's origin story is about 2,000 years older.
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'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.
To think that the heritage of the West, including post-war liberalism, was a selfish, secular, practical arrangement of politics is a fiction.
My parents were secular. I am an atheist.
The Obamacare contraception mandate was never about freedom. It was always about pitting secularism against religion, and using the power of government to sponsor secularism.
After Operation Protective Edge, I visited every one of the bereaved families. Religious and secular, rich and poor, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, Jews and non-Jews.
We have left and right; religious and secular; Druse; ultra-Orthodox women. Unity is very important.
You want to have two guys making out in front of your 4-year-old? It's OK with them. A guy smoking a joint, blowing the smoke into your little kid's face? OK with them. And I'm not exaggerating here. This is exactly what the secular movement stands for.
Atheists well understand that Christmas is the most visible display of religion in the world, and that any diminishment of it is a good thing to militant secularists.
It's no secret that in New York during the last 30 years there has been a tragic exodus from the churches into materialism, secularism and humanism.
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.
Iran is not a make-believe country. It is a real country populated by some 75 million people - real people; including, I daresay, a majority who are philosophically and by education inclined toward the modern, secular world, and particularly American values.
The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.
Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.
Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?
I've received a lot of positive feedback from both the secular and Christian markets. People seem to be receiving it with open arms and hearts, and are interested in the stories I want to share about my relationship with God and my faith.
John Paul was the first modern pope to grow up in a secular culture: He attended public schools, danced with girls - indeed, as a teenager he had a crush on a beautiful Jewish girl who fled his hometown just ahead of the arrival of the Germans.
