Robert Neelly Bellah

We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

...for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

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

— Robert Neelly Bellah

We have to treat others as part of who we are, rather than as a 'them' with whom we are in constant…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

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

— Robert Neelly Bellah

The central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

The problem of the universal is difficult in every case. The universal and the particular can never be separated; they always go…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

Yet Buddhism is four hundred years older than Christianity, and if it's not a universal religion I don't know what a universal…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

The academic world is one of the few places where prejudice is supposed to be totally banned, and we're politically correct on…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

Women have entered the work force . . . partly to express their feelings of self-worth . . . partly because today…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

"Nothing is ever lost" means that what we are now goes all the way back through natural history. We are biological organisms…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

We may wonder at the choice of Israel and Rome as the archetypes of the new nation, in view of the long…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

One of the important things about religion is that it is a sphere which is partially protected from selection. Religious creativity occurs…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

Hinduism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are huge traditions of enormous importance, and they aren't monotheistic. Again, this reflects the fact that our preconceptions…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

We have imagined ourselves a special creation, set apart from other humans. In the last twentieth century, we see that our povertyis…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed…

— Robert Neelly Bellah

It's clear all the way through history that practices are primary and beliefs are secondary.

— Robert Neelly Bellah

Human culture, in evolutionary terms, moves from episodic, to mimetic, to mythic, to theoretic - that made all kinds of sense. To…

— Robert Neelly Bellah