"Nothing can be more repugnant to the thinking man of today than the fundamental doctrine of Orthodoxy, which is that tradition is infallible. Such infallibility could be believed in, as long as the human mind thought of God and Revelation in semi-mythological terms...The doctrine of infallibility rules out of court all research and criticism and demands implicit faith in the truth of whatever has come down from the past. It precludes all conscious development in thought and practice and deprives Judaism of the power to survive in an environment that permits of free contact with non-Jewish civilizations." - A Program for the Reconstructing of Judaism, Menorah Journal 1920

"To believe in God means to accept life on the assumption that it harbors conditions in the outer world and drives in the human spirit which together impel man to transcend himself. To believe in God means to take for granted that it is man's destiny to rise above the brute and to eliminate all forms of violence and exploitation from human society. In brief, God is the Power in the cosmos that gives human life the direction that enables the human being to reflect the image of God..." -The Many Faces of God: A Reader of Modern Jewish Theologies pp. 22

"Judaism as otherness is thus something far more comprehensive than Jewish religion. It includes that nexus of history, literature, language, social organization, folk sanctions, standards of conduct, social and spiritual ideals, and esthetic values which in their totality form a civilization. What endangers that civilization is not only the preoccupation with the civilizations of their peoples but also the irrelevance, remoteness, and vacuity of Jewish life. There is little at present in Jewish life that offers a field for self-expression to the average man and woman who is not engaged either as rabbi, educator, or social worker. If one does not have a taste for praying three times a day and studying the Bible and rabbinic writings, there is nothing in any of the current versions of Judaism to hold one’s interest as a Jew. "
- Judaism as a Civilization pp. 177

"Jewish religion, Jewish peoplehood, and Jewish culture are all aspects of the same reality, and each is meaningless apart from its relation to the totality of Jewish life."
-The Future of the American Jew

"The existential reality of the Jewish people and certainly the religious significance of its peoplehood are inconceivable apart from the Bible...To take the Torah seriously requires, in the first place, to learn to view it dynamically, that is, as subject to change and development.... Seen in this light, whatever new developments take place in Jewish life, in democratic response to new and unprecedented challenges and emergencies, should be regarded as Torah and as equally binding..."
-Judaism Without Supernaturalism

"Revelation is the ongoing process in which humans discover the means for salvation. Mt. Sinai was the beginning of this process of discovery. There is no transcendent God or any outside deity that communicated to the people. God is the process or power that enables us to discover the means for salvation from within ourselves. Therefore, Judaism is whatever the Jewish community agrees upon it to be. Torah is Judaism’s unique form of wisdom. Torah is also unique because its content deals with ultimate questions of human existence."
- Judaism Without Supernaturalism

"The idea of the Chosen People was justifiable religious doctrine in ancient Judaism but today it is not merely untenable, but also detrimental to a normal adjustment of the Jew to his environment...This idea is warranted, to be sure, in the realm of opinion as an assertation of Judaism's contribution to the religion of mankind in the past...But it is not as such on opinion that is it included in the traditional prayer book. There is it in the realm of dogma and is meant to affirm that the Jewish people has been chosen to occupy forever the central place in the divine scheme of salvation. As such it neither is not can be any longer accepted by modern-minded Jews." - Kaplan's Declaration at the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation conference, 1945

“If we Jews would accept [the program for the ‘reconstruction’ of Jewish life] or some similar program, as our vocation, we would not need to have our morale bolstered up by such a spiritual anachronism as extolling God for ‘not having made us like the other nations.’ Instead, we would find our calling as a people so absorbing, so satisfying and so thrilling that we would have every reason in the world to thank God for having manifested [God’s] love to us … and for having rendered us worthy to be identified with [God’s] great and holy name.” - The Future of the American Jew pp.230

"The idea of race or national superiority exercises divisive influences generating suspicion and hatred...we cannot assume that Israel must at all times possess that spirit to a higher degree than other people. ... Thank God I had the courage to go through with the excision of such a cancerous growth from the Jewish consciousness ... "
-Judaism as a Civilization pp. 43