Pagan Quotes - Page 5

• The faith engaged with Platonism in the ancient world, with Aristotle in the medieval world, with nominalism in the Reformation era, and with rationalism in the modern world. Now the church must engage with the emergence of a postmodern, post- Christian, neo-pagan world.

  Robert E. Webber

  Christian, Church, Ancient World

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• The Romans had, like other Pagan nations, a nature festival, called by them Saturnalia, and the Northern peoples had Yule; both celebrated the turn of the year from the death of winter to the life of spring - the winter solstice. As this was an auspicious change the festival was a very joyous one... The giving of presents and the burning of candles characterized it. Among the Northern people the lighting of a huge log in the houses of the great and with appropriate ceremonies was a feature.

  Samuel L. Jackson

  Spring, Winter, Years

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• The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Philosophy, Drinking

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

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• The stranger in ancient Israel did not serve as a judge, although he received all the benefits of living in the land. The political question is this: By what biblical standard is the pagan to be granted the right to bring political sanctions against God's people? We recognize that unbelievers are not to vote in Church elections. Why should they be allowed to vote in civil elections in a covenanted Christian nation? Which judicial standards will they impose? By what other standard than the Bible?

  Gary North

  Christian, Biblical, Land

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• Moral theory develops from the divine command theory of medieval Christian philosophy, mixed up with a bit of ancient pagan virtue theory, to the purely secular moral sentiment and interpersonal reaction theories of Smith and Hume, to Kant's attempt to restore command theory but with something supersensible in the individual rather than God as the source of authority.

  Catherine Wilson

  Christian, Philosophy, Moral

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Men, Differences

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis”, p.28, HarperCollins UK

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• I think it's important to realise that what happens in Neo-Platonism beginning with Plotinus and Porphyry and then going on for the next several centuries, is a real kind of contest for the ideas and convictions of the intelligentsia of the later Roman Empire. So that you have Christians slowly converting more and more powerful people until of course actually Constantine and then other emperors after him, become Christian, and the empire becomes a Christian empire rather than Pagan empire.

  Peter Adamson

  Christian, Powerful, Real

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Pagan philosophers set up reason as the sole guide of life, of wisdom and conduct; but Christian philosophy demands of us that we surrender our reason to the Holy Spirit; and this means that we no longer live for ourselves, but that Christ lives and reigns within us (Rom 12:1; Eph 4:23; Gal 2:20).

  John Calvin

  Christian, Philosophy, Mean

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.27, Baker Books

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• [He] looked up and imagined the hand of God flinging stars like shining dust across the heavens. No. He was wrong to think such pagan thoughts, for God had only to utter a word and it was done. Only man had He shaped with His hands, using the dust He created to form His most precious and amazing creation. Only man was molded and loved into being, the breath of life in his lungs given by God.

  Francine Rivers

  Stars, Thinking, Men

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• The great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece were the last living termsonce had a vast and perhaps perfect science of itsown, a science in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Wisdom, Science, Egypt

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• Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.

  John Trudell

  Native American, Years, Savages

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• The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.

  Blaise Pascal

  Christian, Environmental, And Love

  Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1861). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.294

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• Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Deeds, Sacred Things, Prophet

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ilya Schor (1995). “The Earth is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe”, p.14, Jewish Lights Publishing

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• Often pagans, with their eyes wide open, do not see very clearly.

  Georges Rouault

  Eye, Eyes Wide Open, Wide

  "Rouault". Book by Lionello Venturi, 1947.

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• Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Fighting, Men, Space

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• I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.

  Timothy Leary

  During Starwood Festival in July 1991. "Timothy Leary Live at Starwood". Audio Cassette by the Association for Consciousness Exploration, 1992.

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• Prayers offered up in Christian worship in the earliest days of the faith were addressed to 'Our Lord the Sun,' evidencing that 'primitive' Christians were quite in the spirit of Pagan forms and ideologies.

  Alvin Boyd Kuhn

  Christian, Prayer, Sun

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• Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

  John Adams

  Christian, Men, Numbers

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1969). “The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government”

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• By pagans the Jews (and later Christians) were seen as perverse, almost indeed as atheists, for they denied the very existence of other gods.

  Adrian Goldsworthy

  Christian, Atheist, Humour

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• We have accounts of the deification of men in pagan mythology. But I do not remember any account of a god becoming a man, to help man. Whoever heard of Jupiter or Mars or Minerva coming down and attempting to bear the burdens of men? The gods were willing enough to receive the gifts of men, but Christianity is unique in the fact that our God became a man with human infirmity and emptied Himself of the glory of heaven, in order that He might take upon Himself the sins, diseases and weakness of our humanity.

  A. C. Dixon

  Men, Unique, Order

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• It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Rhetorical Strategies, Law, Catholic

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• It is very hard not to see extensive and basic similarities between these (Pagan) religions and the Christian Religion. But somehow Christian scholars have managed not to see it, and this, one must suspect, for dogmatic reasons.

  Robert M. Price

  Christian, Reason, Scholar

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• Abortion is without a doubt one of the greatest moral evils within modernity. As the "Advocate of Christian Memory," a pope must take up the mantle of defending the culture of life - a defense the Early Church held against the pagans of Rome.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Memories, Rome

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• Our problem in America is not with atheists or the pagans who are consistent with their unbelief, but with believers who are inconsistent with their belief.

  Randall Terry

  Christian, Religious, Atheist

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• Identifying as a Pagan, feminist, Witch, and anarchist is possibly a way to alarm great segments of the general public, but at least it keeps me from sinking into a boring and respectable middle age.

  Starhawk

  Feminist, Age, Identity

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