All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.