“Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”

— Pope John Paul II, Letter to Rev. George V. Coyne, 1 June 1988

About Pope John Paul II

1920 – 2005

Polish-born pope who led the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005.

“Remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm and look forward to the future with confidence.”

“A person's rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object for use.”

“Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”

“There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.”