Education Quote by Uma Thurman

Uma Thurman’s line lands like a polite confession of modern spiritual consumerism: she’s not renouncing faith, she’s admitting she shops. The first sentence grants Buddhism real formative power, a credibility move that signals discipline and interior work rather than celebrity dabbling. Then she pivots to a more culturally recognizable posture: eclecticism with boundaries. “I like all religions” is the socially fluent part, the kind of tolerance that plays well in a pluralistic, media-trained world. “But only parts of them” is the tell - the insistence on editorial control.

The intent isn’t to build a theology; it’s to justify a personal ethic without kneeling to any institution. Thurman’s subtext is wary of totalizing belief systems: take what clarifies your life, leave what constrains it. In a post-60s, post-New Age celebrity context, Buddhism often functions less as a doctrinal package than as a toolkit: meditation, compassion, non-attachment, an aesthetic of calm. Saying it “had a major effect” frames those tools as identity-shaping, while the selective approach to “all religions” marks her as both open-minded and autonomous.

What makes the quote work is its tension between reverence and refusal. She wants the depth and legitimacy of tradition without the obligation of orthodoxy. It’s a familiar late-modern bargain: meaning, yes; membership, maybe not.