"When everything is going great, nobody remembers God; there is no need. God is the need of the suffering, downtrodden. So if you say seventy percent of Brazilians are without food, without houses, then God must be a Brazilian.

"God is the property of the poor, the hope of those who are living a hopeless life. And they will continue to live in poverty until they get rid of this God. So tell the Brazilians, 'God is a Brazilian, so it is our duty to finish him.'

"Once God is finished from the world, man need not suffer. For the simple reason that then we will start functioning intelligently. There is no need for poverty, there is no need for misery, there is no need for so much sickness, there is no need for man to live only seventy years; these are just because we have not tried intelligence in living. Wherever we have tried it we have reached immense heights.

"Only as far as man is concerned are we dependent on God. It is only three hundred years since science came into being. It revolted against the world and all kinds of superstitions. And within three hundred years, science has given man so much, that in thirty thousand years religions have not been able to provide. And this, too, science has contributed against the priests, against the politicians. If politicians and priests are not there, man can take a quantum leap.

"There is no barrier between man and paradise. But the priest wants people to be poor, because only the poor need him. It is a simple business ideology. The politician wants people poor, because only the poor can be conditioned. They are illiterate, uneducated, and they are in so much suffering that any hope and they are ready to buy it. It may be God, it may be communism, it may be revolution – something in the future, faraway – the poor are ready to buy it.

"The politicians have been selling hope for thousands of years, the priests have been selling hope. And it is really strange that after such a long time, they are still doing good business. Man seems to be fast asleep, without looking at the whole strategy."