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One of the challenges of secularism is that it's not something outside us. In too many instances, secularism has so permeated the church that sometimes it's the frame of reference even for very good people, people who have a strong allegiance to the church.

Secularism does not accept many things as absolutes. Its principal objectives are pleasure and self-interest. Often, those who embrace secularism have a different look about them.

Secular thinkers have no more been able to work free of the centuries-old Judeo-Christian culture than Christian theologians were able to work free of their inheritance of classical and pagan thought. The process... has not been the deletion and replacement of religious ideas but rather the assimilation and reinterpretation of religious ideas.

I am more spiritual than religious.

We live in secular world now, but most of our art and culture is rooted in religion.

I think that the practice of religion allows one to discover emotional and psychological truth of a kind not available in the secular world.

The word spiritual, not the word religious, is the key.

Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that.

The basic assumption of the secular society is that modernity overcomes religion.

The road to the sacred leads through the secular.