Doctrine Quotes - Page 9

• The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.

  Bernard Crick

  Political, Politics, Problem

  Bernard Crick (1954). “In defence of politics”, p.17, Bernard Crick

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• All large political doctrines are rich in difficult problems - problems that are quite above the average citizen's reach. And that is not strange, since they are also above the reach of the ablest minds in the country; after all the fuss and all the talk, not one of those doctrines has been conclusively proven to be the right one and the best.

  Mark Twain

  Country, Average, Political

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• True religion is not a mere doctrine, something that can be taught, but is a way of life. A life in community with God. It must be experienced to be appreciated. A life of service. A living by giving and finding one's own happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.

  William J. H. Boetcker

  Giving, Community, Religion

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• The intellectual content of religions has always finally adapted itself to scientific and social conditions after they have become clear.... For this reason I do not think that those who are concerned about the future of a religious attitude should trouble themselves about the conflict of science with traditional doctrines.

  John Dewey

  Religious, Attitude, Thinking

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Kurtz (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929-1930”, p.273, SIU Press

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• Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.

  William James

  Science, Thinking, Hands

  1907 Pragmatism.

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• Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

  Nhat Hanh

  God, Buddhist, Truth

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2005). “Thundering Silence: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake”, p.38, Parallax Press

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• You don't have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system - a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars - for that is what their essential function is - to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies".

  Noam Chomsky

  Truth, Independent, Issues

  "Language and Politics". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1988.

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• The downside, of course, is that over time religions become encrusted with precepts and ideas that are the antithesis of soul, as each faith tries to protect its doctrines and institution instead of nurturing the evolution of consciousness. If one is not careful to distinguish the genuine insights of a religion from its irrelevant accretions, one can go through life following an inappropriate moral compass.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Faith, Business, Ideas

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.118, Penguin

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• When doctrines divide and "isms" turn human against human, without speech, without silence, let us demonstrate. Let these demonstrations manifest everywhere. Not what we think or say but what we do shall avail - on with the dance.

  Samuel L. Lewis

  Dance, Thinking, Silence

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• It is God who gives us the spirit of worship (Psalm 133:3), and it is what we know of God that produces this spirit of worship. We might say that worship is simply theology, doctrine, what we think about God, going into top gear! Instead of merely thinking about Him, we tell Him, in prayer and praise and song, how great and glorious we believe Him to be!

  Sinclair B. Ferguson

  Song, Prayer, Believe

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• The foundation of true holiness and true Christian worship is the doctrine of the gospel, what we are to believe. So when Christian doctrine is neglected, forsaken, or corrupted, true holiness and worship will also be neglected, forsaken, and corrupted.

  John Owen

  Christian, Believe, Foundation

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• The store of wisdom does not consist
  of hard coins which keep their shape
  as they pass from hand to hand;
  it consists of ideas and doctrines
  whose meanings change
  with the minds that entertain them.

  John Plamenatz

  Knowledge, Hands, Ideas

  John Petrov Plamenatz (1963). “Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Social and Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx... John Plamenatz....”

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• The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, War, Teaching

  "Why I Am Not a Christian".

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• Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage-good teaching-than a bill forcing our honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Teacher, Teaching, Science

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• It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Spiritual, Religious

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• The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Cynical, Spirituality

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.76, Knopf

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• But the fact that Christ as the bridegroom brings forth fruit through me as the bride, through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit by faith, opens the way for me as a Christian to begin to know in the present life the reality of the supernatural. This is where the Christian is to live. Doctrine is important, but it is not an end in itself. There is to be an experiential reality, moment by moment.

  Francis Schaeffer

  God, Christian, Reality

  Francis Schaeffer (2012). “True Spirituality”, p.62, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• In two areas above all others the Christian demonstration of love and communication stands clear: in the area of the Christian couple and their children; and in the personal relationships of Christians in the church. If there is no demonstration in these two places, on the personal level, the world can conclude that orthodox Christian doctrine is nothing but dead, cold words.

  Francis Schaeffer

  God, Christian, Children

  Francis Schaeffer (2012). “True Spirituality”, p.141, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.

  William Wilberforce

  Wealth, Natural, Claims

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• They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Heart, Men, Rights

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1960). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954”, p.518, Best Books on

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• It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.

  Havelock Ellis

  Men, Elephants, Atheism

  Havelock Ellis (1915). “Impressions and comments”

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• Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Law, Names

  Mark Twain, David Ketterer (1984). “The science fiction of Mark Twain”

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• Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Faith, Religious, Mistake

  "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". "The American Biology Teacher", Volume 35, (pp. 125-129), March 1973.

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• The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism.

  Karl Popper

  Future, Mean, Science

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• Free-will doctrine-what does it? It magnifies man into God. It declares God's purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God's will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent on human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice, it holds God to be a debtor to sinners.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Men, Waiting, Grace

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