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1 " When we speak of the human animal's spontaneous interchange with the animate landscape, we acknowledge a felt relation to the mysterious that was active long before any formal or priestly religions. The instinctive rapport with an enigmatic cosmos at once both nourishing and dangerous lies at the ancient heart of all we have come to call " the sacred" . Temporarily forgotten, paved over yet never eradicated, this old reciprocity with the breathing earth was here long before all our formal religions, and it will likely outlast all our formal religions. For it has always been operative underneath our various religions, nourishing them from below like a subterranean river. There is no disdain for religion in such a statement. We can honor the awesome eloquence of each religion while acknowledging the precarious nature of church-based faiths in today's crowded and crisis-ridden world, where people of divergent scriptures must somehow learn to get along. Our greatest hope for the future rests not in the triumph of any single set of beliefs, but in the acknowledgment of a felt mystery that underlies all our doctrines. It rests in the remembering of that corporeal faith that flows underneath all mere beliefs: the human body's implicit faith in the steady sustenance of the air and the renewal of light every dawn, its faith in mountains and rivers and the enduring support of the ground, in the silent germination of seeds and the cyclical return of the salmon. There are no priests needed in such a faith, no intermediaries or experts necessary to effect our contact with the sacred, since - carnally immersed as we are in the thick of this breathing planet - we each have our own intimate access to the big mystery. "
2 " But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived? "
― Markus Zusak , The Book Thief
3 " No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his. "
― John Stuart Mill , Considerations on Representative Government
4 " The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power. "
5 " It is a sad day for our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge. "