Obedience Quotes - Page 38

• I won't stick around to see how much temptation I can take. God is not impressed with my ability to stand up to sin. He is more impressed by the obedience I show when I run from it.

  Joshua Harris

  Running, Temptation, Sticks

  Joshua Harris (2012). “I Kissed Dating Goodbye: A New Attitude Toward Relationships and Romance”, p.102, Multnomah

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage.

  John Locke

  Hands, Law, Temptation

  John Locke (1821). “Two treatises of government”, p.313

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The obedience of men is to imitate the obedience of angels, and rational beings on earth are to live unto God, as rational beings in heaven live unto Him.

  William Law

  Angel, Men, Heaven

  William Law (2001). “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians, Volume 4”, p.47, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Men, Self, Religion

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 494, 1895.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even in this secular country, the threat posed by religious fundamentalists is never very far away. Every major religious text exhorts the same principles - that of unyielding obedience to a supernatural being, and renunciation of the intellect and personal aspirations.

  Andrew Bernstein

  Country, Religious, Supernatural Beings

  5 Copy quote

• Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority.

  Andrew Bernstein

  Men, Atheism, Fellow Man

  12 Copy quote

• I left the convent and that was because I wasn't a very good nun. I could see that I wasn't going to make it. It's very difficult to be a nun, or to live a religious life. It's very difficult to live a life of total celibacy or a life without any possessions or material responsibilities at all, or in total obedience to somebody else, and remain a mature whole human being, and I knew that I wasn't going to be one of those.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Responsibility, Mature

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science ... looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but to vigorous debate, and in many respects that's the secret of its success.

  Carl Sagan

  Secret, Looks, Old And New

  15 Copy quote

• Obedience is the only virtue that plants the other virtues in the heart and preserves them after they have been planted.

  Pope Gregory I

  Heart, Virtue, Plant

  33 Copy quote

• We cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or know what obedience we owe to the magistrate, or what we may justly expect from him, unless we know what he is, why he is, and by whom he is made to be what he is.... I cannot know how to obey unless I know in what, and to whom; nor in what unless I know what ought to be commanded; nor what ought to be commanded unless I understand the original right of the commander, which is the great arcanum.

  Algernon Sidney

  May, Made, Know How

  4 Copy quote

• A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Blood, Order, Tyrants

  5 Copy quote

• The pseudo-conscience ... demands not obedience to the inner law of our being, but conformity to super-imposed convention.

  Frances G. Wickes

  Law, Demand, Pseudo

  5 Copy quote

• Blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Names, Blind, Our Lives

  8 Copy quote

• Live in robust sanity, in holy obedience to the ordinary." (The Message) "In an insane asylum like the world, simple sanity can be a heroic achievement.

  Peter Kreeft

  Simple, Achievement, Insane

  4 Copy quote

• The day obedience becomes a quest and not an irritation is the day you gain power.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Irritation, Quests, Gains

  12 Copy quote

• The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The opposite or pessimistic spirit drags men down and away from God, looks on the dark side, murmurs, complains, and is slow to yield obedience.

  Orson F. Whitney

  Optimistic, Dark, Men

  20 Copy quote

• They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Body, May

  91 Copy quote

• And have your mother put my head on a stake? Do you have any notion what that would do to my handsome good looks?

  Catherine Gilbert Murdock

  Mother, Parenting, Looks

  Catherine Gilbert Murdock (2009). “Princess Ben”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Spiritual, Prayer, Real

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2017). “The Brothers Karamazov (English Russian Edition illustrated): Братья Карамазовы (англо-русская редакция иллюстрированная)”, p.747, Clap Publishing, LLC.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift. When I cried inconsolably through my first hour of life, my tears were her inspiration. Shaking her head sympathetically at Mother, the fairy touched my nose. "My gift is obedience. Ella will always be obedient. Now stop crying, child." I stopped.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Mother, Children, Inspiration

  Gail Carson Levine (2012). “Ella Enchanted”, p.3, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Strong, Fall, Errors

  Elisabeth Elliot (2006). “Discipline: The Glad Surrender”, p.142, Revell

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rome is burning, Jesus says. Drop your fiddle, change your life and come to Me. Let go of the good days that never were - a regimented church you never attended, traditional virtues you never practiced, legalistic obedience you never honored, and a sterile orthodoxy you never accepted. The old era is done. The decisive inbreak of God has happened.

  Brennan Manning

  Letting Go, Jesus, Good Day

  19 Copy quote

• Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we ‘must’ think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement

  Gilles Deleuze

  Communication, Thinking, Order

  18 Copy quote

• Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental position of choice in modern life. “I have chosen you,” Jesus said, “you have not chosen me.” We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. We have no rights, only responsibilities. Following Christ is not our initiative, merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling. Once we have been called, we literally “have no choice.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Responsibility, Rights

  7 Copy quote

• For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.

  Hannah Arendt

  Nurse, Support, Nursery

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.243, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source