I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. –Napoleon
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details." (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)
"In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views.". (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 214)
"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." --Albert Einstein
"If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity. It is the duty of every man of good will to strive steadfastly in his own little world to make this teaching of pure humanity a living force, so far as he can. If he makes an honest attempt in this direction without being crushed and trampled under foot by his contemporaries, he may consider himself and the community to which he belongs lucky." -The World as I See It (1935) - Albert Einstein
"Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres." (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things." - As quoted in Glimpses of the Great
†homas Jefferson, thought Jesus' teachings the most sublime set of morals ever offered mankind and like Tolstoy and Jesus, devalued miracles (Matthew 16:4 "A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign..").
In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson compared his Academic education to Jesus' teachings:
"We must dismiss the Platonists & Scholastics, their essence as nonsense. Let's reduce our libraries to Jesus' words, paring off the amphibologisms & misconceptions. Then one finds the most sublime & benevolent code of morals ever offered man.
I have surgically cut out, verse by verse, words evidently from Jesus, distinguished as diamonds in dirt." - Thomas Jefferson
Lord Irwin asked Gandhi what he thought would solve the problems between Great Britain and India. Gandhi picked up a Bible and opened it to the fifth chapter of Matthew and said: "When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world."
To use Gandhi's words, "Today supposing I was deprived of the Gita and forgot all its contents but had a copy of the Sermon on the Mount, I would deprive the same joy from it as I do from the Gita." Gandhi loved Christianity because of its absolute emphasis on love as the most ethical virtue.
