I grew up Presbyterian. Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of humility and the acknowledgment that no one has a monopoly on truth.
John Templeton reflects on the divisions among various religious groups, each believing their own views to be correct while viewing others as misguided. He advocates for humility and the understanding that knowledge is not absolute, urging individuals to appreciate differing perspectives rather than clinging rigidly to their own beliefs.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about tolerance in diverse communities.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
Life is made up not necessarily of great sacrifices or high-level duties but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the commitments and obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and lovingly are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry of service performed by every useful life.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.
The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.
Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.
Pay now, play later; play now, pay later.
Jealousy is comparison. And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare, always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.
The grateful person fears no court or judge, no sentence or executioner, but what he carries about him in his own breast: and being still the most severe exactor of himself, not only confesses but proclaims his debts.
More precious is want with honesty than wealth with infamy.
We really can't forecast all that well, and yet we pretend that we can, but we really can't.
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