Idolatry Quotes - Page 8

• Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie.

  David Hackworth

  War, Scripts, Easy

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• If the heart be chiefly and directly fixed on God, and the soul engaged to glorify him, some degree of religious affection will be the effect and attendant of it. But to seek after affection directly and chiefly; to have the heart principally set upon that; is to place it in the room of God and his glory. If it be sought, that others may take notice of it, and admire us for our spirituality and forwardness in religion, it is then damnable pride; if for the sake of feeling the pleasure of being affected, it is then idolatry and self-gratification.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Religious, Heart, Pride

  David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, Philip Eugene Howard (1949). “David Brainerd: his life and diary”

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• We need a critical  theory  that seeks to change the world by challenging the world - including the world of evangelicals - in its market-driven, all, consuming consumerist idolatries.

  Carl R Trueman

  Challenges, Needs, World

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• [Those who accept] the Americanized, Constantinian paradigm [say:] We are of God; they are of the Devil. We are the light; they are the darkness. Our wars are therefore "holy" wars. With all due respect, this is blatant idolatry.

  Gregory A. Boyd

  War, Light, Darkness

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• Ordinary love is mere animal attraction. Otherwise why is the distinction between the sexes? If one kneels before an image, it is dreadful idolatry; but if one kneels before husband or wife, it is quite permissible!

  Swami Vivekananda

  Sex, Husband, Animal

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Addresses on Bhakti Yoga: Art of living”, p.13, editionNEXT.com

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• A fact of modern life is that it takes women longer to get ready than men.

  Jessica Savitch

  Men, Modern Life, Facts

  Jessica Savitch (1983). “Anchorwoman”, Berkley

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• Orthodoxy is idolatry if it means holding the 'correct opinions about God' - 'fundamentalism' is the most extreme and salient example of such idolatry - but not if it means holding faith in the right way, that is, not holding it at all but being held by God, in love and service. Theology is idolatry if it means what we say about God instead of letting ourselves be addressed by what God has to say to us. Faith is idolatrous if it is rigidly self-certain but not if it is softened in the waters of 'doubt.

  John D. Caputo

  Mean, Self, Water

  John D. Caputo (2007). “What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (The Church and Postmodern Culture): The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church”, p.131, Baker Academic

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• I have not loved the World, nor the World me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee, Nor coined my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud In worship of an echo.

  Lord Byron

  Echoes, World, Knees

  'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' (1812-18) canto 3, st. 113

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• Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

  John Ruskin

  Teaching, Complaining, Literature

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• True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.

  John Shelby Spong

  Journey, Religion, Doe

  "Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions". Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007.

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• What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom-but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk-from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Pain, Struggle, Ignorance

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• The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Men, Technology

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

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• I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.

  Michael Palin

  Writing, Thinking, Modern

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• The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

  Ezra Pound

  Artist, Doe, Literature

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• Modern American cinema seems to me superficial. The intention is to understand a certain reality, and the result is nothing but a photographing of that reality.

  Manuel Puig

  Reality, Cinema, Literature

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• When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Art, Love Is, Hands

  George Bernard Shaw (2006). “Three Plays for Puritans”, p.34, Penguin UK

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• Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age

  Lord Chesterfield

  Judging, Age, Merit

  'Letters to his Son' (1774) 27 February 1748

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• Rome has not seen a modern building in more than half a century. It is a city frozen in time.

  Richard Meier

  Rome, Cities, Frozen

  "Building in Rome, no holiday / The eternal city wants to keep its architecture fixed in time, but the Ara Pacis marks a renaissance of modern era" by Zahid Sardar, www.sfgate.com. April 26, 2006.

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• And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear.

  Christopher Columbus

  Fear, Believe, Sky

  Christopher Columbus (1959). “A new and fresh English translation of the letter of Columbus announcing the discovery of America”

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• In one period the grossest ignorance and barbarism prevailed in the world; and afterwards, in a more enlightened age, the most daring infidelity, and contempt of God; so that the world which was once over-run with ignorance, now by wisdom knew not God, but changed the glory of the incorruptible God as much as in the most barbarous ages, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Nay, as they increased in science and politeness, they ran into more abundant and extravagant idolatries.

  William Carey

  Running, Ignorance, Men

  "An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians". Book by William Carey, 1792.

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• Our English people are much addicted to raising idols, and then revenging themselves on their own idolatry by knocking down and demolishing the poor bits of wood and stone that they had worshipped as gods. How many literary reputations have been so treated!

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Idols, People, Woods

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• If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Grieving, Skeletons

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• The position of modern science, as far as an ignorant man of letters can understand it, seems not a step in advance of that held by Huxley and Romanes in the last century.

  Albert J. Nock

  Men, Ignorant, Letters

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• Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long- range future of anyone.

  John Shelby Spong

  Ignorance, Biblical, Two

  John Shelby Spong (1994). “Resurrection: myth or reality? : a bishop's search for the origins of Christianity”, Harpercollins

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• Given the sin of impiety through which they [the Romans] sinned against the divine nature [by idolatry], the punishment that led them to sin against their own nature followed.... I say, therefore, that since they changed into lies [by idolatry] the truth about God, He brought them to ignominious passions, that is, to sins against nature; not that God led them to evil, but only that he abandoned them to evil.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Christian, Lying, Passion

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