Quotes About Unity

WE KNOW THAT to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that to pollute the air or the oceans in order to achieve some short-term benefit would be to destroy the very basis for our survival. As individuals and nations are becoming increasingly interdependent, we have no other choice than to develop what I call a sense of universal responsibility.

ONE OF THE things that meditation teaches us, when we slowly descend into ourselves, is that the sense of peace already exists in us. We all have a deep desire for it even if it's often hidden, masked, thwarted. If we examine human nature carefully, it is good, well disposed, helpful. And it seems to me that nowadays the spirit of harmony is increasing, that our desire to live together calmly is growing stronger and stronger; it's more and more widespread.

I prefer to heed the wise words of Booker T. Washington: I would permit no man to drag down my soul by making me hate him.

It took many years to cleanse Arabia of its "false idols." It will take many more to cleanse Islam of its new false idols—bigotry and fanaticism—worshipped by those who have replaced Muhammad's original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. But the cleansing is inevitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it. 1

solely through the slow and steady building of personal relationships that one discovers the fundamental truth that all people everywhere have the same dreams and aspirations, that all people struggle with the same fears and anxieties.

the famed French theorist Ernest Renan, who years ago defined the nation as "a group of people united in a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors.

It could be known only through six divine "evocations" that it brought forth into the world from its own being: wisdom, truth, power, love, unity, and immortality. These are not so much Ahura Mazda's attributes as they are the six substances that make up its essence.

Religion engenders both inclusion and exclusion. It spawns as much conflict in society as it does cohesion.

But tawhid, which literally means "making one," implies more than just monotheism. True, there is only one God, but that is just the beginning. Tawhid means that God is Oneness. God is Unity: wholly indivisible, entirely unique, and utterly indefinable. God resembles nothing in either essence or attributes.

Thus, the Quran promises that "all those who believe—the Jews, the Sabians, the Christians—anyone who believes in God and the Last Days, and who does good deeds, will have nothing to fear

Jesus, on the other hand, was America. He was the central figure in America's national drama. Accepting him into my heart was as close as I could get to feeling truly American.

We believe in God, and in that which has been revealed to us, which is that which was revealed to Abraham and Ismail and Jacob and the tribes [of Israel], as well as that which the Lord revealed to Moses and to Jesus and to all the other Prophets. We make no distinction between any of them; we submit ourselves to God. (3:84)

Some have argued, a few of them violently, that the Caliphate should be restored as the emblem of Muslim unity. These Muslims believe that the ideals of Islam and nationalism are "diametrically opposed to each other," to quote Mawlana Mawdudi, founder of the Pakistani sociopolitical movement Jama'at-i Islami (the Islamic Association).

In fact, the Quran proposes the unprecedented notion that all revealed scriptures are derived from a single concealed book in heaven called the Umm al-Kitab, or "Mother of Books" (13:39).

As the Quran suggests over and over again, and as the Constitution of Medina explicitly affirms, Muhammad may have understood the concept of the Umm al-Kitab to mean not only that the Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared a single divine scripture but also that they constituted a single divine Ummah.

Ezekiel declared, "in the center of all nations

Nothing can be substantially independent of God because there is nothing else but God." In other words, what we call the world and what we call God are not independent or discrete. Rather, the world is God's self-expression. It is God's essence realized and experienced.2

A true Sufi, Shaykh Haeri writes, "does not separate the inner from the outer," for when you "start by purifying your inner self, you end up being concerned with the outer and with society.

Even al-Hallaj admitted that his experience of unity with God came after a long journey of inward reflection. "Your Spirit mixed with my Spirit little by little," he wrote of God in his Diwan, "by turns, through reunions and abandons. And now I am Yourself. Your existence is my own, and it is also my will.

Tipo increíble, dijo Renzi. Personaje local, le digo, como todos acá. Eso es lo que tiene de bueno vivir en un pueblo: todos somos personajes importantes.

Manus manum lavat.

Hoi, hoi u embleer hrair! M'saion ule' hraka vair!

Rabbits have enough enemies as it is. They ought not to make more among themselves.

Frith meant us to get back," replied Holly. "That's the real reason why we're here.