Robert Neelly Bellah famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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

#Retirement #Home #Giving
Women have entered the work force . . . partly to express their feelings of self-worth . . . partly because today many families would not survive without two incomes, partly because they are not at all sure their marriages will last. The day of the husband as permanent meal-ticket is over, a fact most women recognize, however they feel about "women's liberation.
-- Robert Neelly Bellah

#Husband #Self Worth #Two
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 Neelly Bellah

#Race #Special #Essentials
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 Neelly Bellah

#Philosophy #Acquisition #Television
We may wonder at the choice of Israel and Rome as the archetypes of the new nation, in view of the long history of suffering of the former and the decline of the latter. We may wonder that our ancestors over-looked the darker days of those earlier nations. They did not. They hoped to construct a republic on principles to sound that if we should decline in piety and public virtue we would meet the inexorable fate of nations, which are as but dust in the hands of God.
-- Robert Neelly Bellah

#Fate #Israel #Views
We have to treat others as part of who we are, rather than as a 'them' with whom we are in constant competition.
-- Robert Neelly Bellah

#Competition #Who We Are #Morality
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 Neelly Bellah

#Children #People #Desire
The family is in flux, and signs of trouble are widespread. Expectations remain high. But realities are disturbing.
-- Robert Neelly Bellah

#Reality #Expectations #Trouble
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 Neelly Bellah

#Children #Home #Parent
...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 Neelly Bellah

#Men #Religion #Purpose

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