Clergy Quotes - Page 7

• Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

  James Madison

  Government, Atheism, Liberty

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Atheism, Rivals

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• ... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.

  Frances Wright

  Spiritual, Teacher, Book

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.45

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• In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Art, Healing

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.215, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate betweenthem. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the other's, and either's success would be the other's failure.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Laughter, Doctors, Silence

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.197, Delphi Classics

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• Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

  Herman Melville

  Religion, World, Voyages

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• In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

  Stendhal

  Success, Calling, World

  Stendhal (2016). “The Red and the Black: World Classics”, p.51, World Classic

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• The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Military, Causes, Empty

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• The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could: but to establish a system of state - we said national - schools, from which all religion was to be excluded.

  Orestes Brownson

  Christian, Religious, School

  Orestes Augustus Brownson (1833). “An Address on Intemperance: Delivered in Walpole, N.H. February 26, 1833”

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• The elite attack religious people and clergy with a vengeance.

  Tim LaHaye

  Christian, Religious, People

  Tim F. LaHaye, Beverly LaHaye (1994). “A Nation Without a Conscience”

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• The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people's night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

  Pope Francis

  Leadership, Attitude, Heart

  "A Big Heart Open to God: An interview with Pope Francis". Interview with Antonio Spadaro, S.J., www.americamagazine.org. September 30, 2013.

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• Whatever your life's pursuit -- art, poetry, sculpture, music, whatever your occupation may be -- you can be as spiritual as clergy, always living a life of praise.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Spiritual, Art, Sculpture

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• That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.

  James Madison

  Religious, Religion, Liberty

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793. v.2. 1794-1815. v.3. 1816-1828. v.4. 1829-1836”, p.12

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• The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Simplicity, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.463

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• By dividing the people of God as clergy and laymen, we have made the latter a majority of lame men.

  Richard P. Stanley

  Men, People, Church

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• The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities....The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Religious, Mean, People

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• It is impossible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation.

  Pope Pius X

  Christian, Order, Faithful

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• Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty!

  Pope Pius X

  Novelty, Catholicism

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• I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church-an equality in the teacher of Religion, and a dependence on the people, are republican sentiments-but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government

  Rufus King

  Teacher, Government, People

  Rufus King (1971). “The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King: 1755-1794”

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• Laypeople are a kind of nuclear energy in the Church on a spiritual level. A layperson caught up with the gospel and living next to other people can "contaminate" two others, and these two, four others, etc. Since lay Christians number not only tens of thousands like the clergy but hundreds of millions, they can truly play a decisive role in spreading the beneficial light of the gospel in the world.

  Raniero Cantalamessa

  Christian, Spiritual, Play

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• Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Hatred, Religion

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• Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.

  Rudolph Rummel

  Government, Political, Having Fun

  "Rudolph Rummel Talks About the Miracle of Liberty and Peace". The Freeman Interview, fee.org. July 1, 1997.

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• The clergy would have us believe them against our own reason, as the woman would have her husband against his own eyes.

  John Selden

  Husband, Believe, Eye

  John Selden (1847). “The Table-talk of John Selden Esq: With a Biographical Preface and Notes”, p.42

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• What do our clergy lose by reading their sermons? They lose preaching, the preaching of the voice in many cases, the preaching of the eye almost always.

  Augustus William Hare

  Reading, Eye, Voice

  Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare (1848). “Guesses at Truth: Second Series”, p.214

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