Chapman, John Jay: "Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.
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One of my "things" with religion is that if the religion itself is the cause of goodness, why is it that so many practicing followers of a given religion get so far off the mark, and descend into hypocrisy and hatred? Yet others (sadly, it seems a smaller portion a lot of the time) can be such good, kind people and make a case of the virtue of the same principals?
I think it's because if you want to be a good person, and work hard to be a good person, and choose your actions and words based on this, you will be a good person. It doesn't really matter which religion you choose as your building block, because at bottom all religions have the same basic principals. Christians, Muslims, Buddists, Secular Humanists all basically say "Think about yourself as a small part of a whole, love and forgive your neighbor, and do no harm."
It's about the effort you put into contemplation, and then putting the fruits of that contemplation into practice. You can't just do without thinking, and you can't just think without doing. That's what makes you a good person. Finding the right thing and then doing it.
