Dogmatic Quotes - Page 5

• Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed- much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Heart, Sky, Breathing

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.14, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My basic view of things is - not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Views

  "Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman". Interviews with Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima; translated by Paul Britten Austin, 1973.

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are many paths to enlightenment. Some of us who have expanded to a degree of illumination have thereafter preached the dogmatic certainty of one particular path. But enlightenment doesn't care how you get there. And if you aren't going to be thinking about it in paradise, then don't worry about it now.

  Thaddeus Golas

  Spiritual, Thinking, Illumination

  9 Copy quote

• I am not religious in the dogmatic sense... I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Religious, Believe

  "My Autobiography". Book by Charlie Chaplin, September 1964.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those wretches tainted with the error of Indifferentism and Modernism hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute, but relative: that is, that it must adapt itself to the varying necessities of the times and the varying dispositions of souls, since it is not contained in an unchangeable revelation, but is, by its very nature, meant to accommodate itself to the life of man.

  Pope Pius XI

  Men, Errors, Soul

  23 Copy quote

• I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

  William James

  Men, Intellectual, Doubt

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.116, Xist Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.

  William James

  Plato, Philosophy, Slumber

  William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.60, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Religious, Philosophical, Hands

  Sydney J. Harris (1985). “Pieces of Eight Pa”, Mariner Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Mean, Heart, Silence

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1888). “System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy.

  Immanuel Kant

  Philosophy, Years, Remembrance

  Immanuel Kant (2002). “Theoretical Philosophy after 1781”, p.42, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tell people too young to know that we came up during two of the most dogmatic times in recent history - the so-called hippie era and the punk era, both of which had a set of codes and rules that you had to look and dress and think a certain way, and for sure, to be of a certain age.

  David First

  Hippie, Thinking, Two

  "The Only Late is Never". Interview with Marc Masters, Grayson Currin, pitchfork.com. November 12, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.

  Edward Abbey

  Philosophy, Lying, Mean

  16 Copy quote

• No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject.

  Henry Adams

  Strong, Attitude, Men

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.101, Booklassic

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time has come for humanity to hoist the standard of the oneness of the human world, so that dogmatic formulas and superstitions may end.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Oneness, Humanity, May

  "The Titanic’s Forgotten 'Survivor'” by Rainn Wilson, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 12, 2012.

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain" - that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain" - that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no artifice to make us forget him.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Rain, Humility, Thinking

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2696, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Speak English, Gold, Facts

  "The Gold Standard". Excerpt from chapter 17 of "Human Action, The Scholar's Edition", book by Ludwig von Mises, mises.org. 1949.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we need to do is to have a sensible approach to immigration. It needs to be open. It needs to be non-dogmatic and non-bigoted. We need to be firm but reasonable in the way we deal with the problem of illegal immigration. And we need to try to get as many of our immigrants who want to do so to become citizens as quickly as possible so that the American people will all see that this is a part of the process of American history, which is a good one for our country.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, People, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  America, Independence, Pieces

  4 Copy quote

• The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism.

  Albert Einstein

  Buddhism, Needs, Cosmic

  12 Copy quote

• Solve all your problems through meditation. Exchange unprofitable religious speculations for actual God-contact. Clear your mind of dogmatic theological debris; let in the fresh, healing waters of direct perception. Attune yourself to the active inner Guidance; the Divine Voice has the answer to every dilemma of life. Through man's ingenuity for getting himself into trouble appears to be endless, the Infinite Succor is no less resourceful.

  Lahiri Mahasaya

  Religious, Healing, Men

  "Autobiography of a Yogi". Ch. 35: The Christlike Life of Lahiri Mahasaya. Book by Paramahansa Yogananda, 1946.

  194 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow." ... Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.

  Edward Abbey

  Hate, Fire, Sheep

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foresight of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement.

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Agony, Feet

  "The Monkey Wrench Gang". Book by Edward Abbey (p. 312), August 1, 1975.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophy, Inspire, Intellectual

  John Stuart Mill (2009). “Dissertations and Discussions”, p.201, Cosimo, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ignorance, Hands, Support

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.2, Routledge

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence

  Bertrand Russell

  Doctrine, World, Adequate

  Bertrand Russell, Andrew G. Bone (2003). “Man's Peril, 1954-55”, p.133, Psychology Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source