Robert N. Bellah Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

Robert N. Bellah
Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.

Robert N. Bellah
The family is in flux, and signs of trouble are widespread. Expectations remain high. But realities are disturbing.

Robert N. Bellah
For limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence.

Robert N. Bellah
While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their best interests.

Robert N. Bellah
We have imagined ourselves a special creation, set apart from other humans. In the last twentieth century, we see that our povertyis as absolute as that of the poorest nations. We have attempted to deny the human condition in our quest for power after power. It would be well for us to rejoin the human race, to accept our essential poverty as a gift, and to share our material wealth with those in need.

Robert N. Bellah
That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

Robert N. Bellah