"Religions grow out of the deepest needs of individuals sharing a common awakening, and are not created by "engineers of the soul."

Daniel Bell Education See all quotes by Daniel Bell →

React to this quote

More by Daniel Bell

“The relationship between a civilization's socio-economic structure and its culture is perhaps the most complicated of all problems for the sociologist.”

“Television, as the most "public" of media, has its limits.”

“The discussion of any society risks seduction by what is transient and tumultuous.”

“Every society seeks to establish a set of meanings through which people can relate themselves to the world.”

“Crime is a form of "unorganized" class struggle, and the lowest groups in the society have always committed a disproportionate number of crimes.”

“That fabulous polymath Samuel Johnson maintained that no man in his right mind ever read a book through from beginning to end.”

Resonant Thoughts

"From my youth you have taught me, O God, and now I would like to proclaim Your Wonders"

— Carl Linnaeus

Science1707–1778

#religion

"Comparative parasitology supports the evolutionary hypothesis. If two animals have a common ancestor, their parasites are likely to be descended from those of the ancestor. This principle has been app…"

— J. B. S. Haldane

Mathematics1892–1964

#science

"Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, …"

— Randolph Sinks Foster

Religion1820–1903

#love

"It seems to me that the simple acceptance of this fundamental fact of American life, this acknowledgment that the law of work is the fundamental law of our being, will help us to start aright in facin…"

— Theodore Roosevelt

Politics1858–1919

#justice