Protestants Quotes

• America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

  Norman Mailer

  Stupid, Eye, White

  1959 Advertisements for Myself,'Advertisement for "Games and Ends"'.

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• Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

  Dave Barry

  Inspirational, Funny, Sports

  Dave Barry (1985). “Dave Barry's Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead”, p.32, Rodale

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• When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'

  Quentin Crisp

  Peace, Atheist, Believe

  "The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp". Book by Quentin Crisp, 1984.

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• I went off to college, a good, middle-class, very proper college, a Brethren institution, where two years of Bible study are required for graduation. It was a good, sound, thorough, but completely biased evaluation of the Bible, and I was delighted with it, because it helped to document my doubts; it gave me a framework within which I could be critical.My independent study continued for 20 years after this. So I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Independent, College, Years

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• As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Men, Long

  Adolf Hitler (1971). “Mein Kampf”, Mariner Books

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• When the epistemologists' concept of consciousness first became popular, it seems to have been in part a transformed application of the Protestant notion of conscience."Consciousness" was imported to play in the mental world the role played by light in the mechanical world.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Play, Light, Firsts

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• Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.

  Walker Percy

  Hymns, Waiting, Catholic

  Walker Percy (2011). “Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World”, p.206, Open Road Media

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• We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Believe, Hard Work, Black And White

  "Secretary Zinke, we can't afford to ignore diversity" by Andre Perry, www.cnn.com. March 27, 2018.

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• One of the the loveliest lines I have ever read comes from Brother Roger, the Prior of the Protestant monks of Taize, France: 'Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' It is still difficult for me to read these words without tears filling my eyes. It is wonderful.

  Brennan Manning

  Brother, Jesus, Eye

  Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.94, Multnomah

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• I have always known that there were spellbinding evil parts for women. For one thing, I was taken at an early age to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Never mind the Protestant work ethic of the dwarfs. Never mind the tedious housework-is-virtuous motif. Never mind the fact that Snow White is a vampire -- anyone who lies in a glass coffin without decaying and then comes to life again must be. The truth is that I was paralysed by the scene in which the evil queen drinks the magic potion and changes her shape. What power, what untold possibilities!

  Margaret Atwood

  Queens, Lying, Taken

  Margaret Atwood (2009). “Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing”, p.127, Hachette UK

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• I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you." "And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh. "I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences." "And atheists?" He was still laughing. "They bore me because all they ever talk about is God.

  Heinrich Böll

  Atheist, Laughing, Catholic

  Heinrich Böll (1965). “The clown”, Avon Books

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• Bid me to live, and I will live
  Thy Protestant to be:
  Or bid me love, and I will give
  A loving heart to thee,
  A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
  A heart as sound and free
  As in the whole world thou canst find,
  That heart I'll give to thee.

  Robert Herrick

  Love, Life, Heart

  'To Anthea, Who May Command Him Anything'

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• I have been represented as a Protestant minister; there was not one of the canvassers of the honourable gentlemen opposite that did not represent to the people that I was not a Minister of the Crown, but that I was a Protestant minister

  Wilfrid Laurier

  Opposites, People, Gentleman

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• ...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti - gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro - slavery and anti - women.

  John Shelby Spong

  Gay, People, Catholic

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• In all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise. The core is religious intolerance. The sides simply change between the Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, etc., depending whether you are talking about the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, America, etc. A common second reason is to prepare the boys to go to war and the girls to cheer them on.

  Marshall Fritz

  Girl, Wise, Country

  "The Separation of School and State Alliance". Interview with Mary Leggewie, www.homeschoolchristian.com. June 3, 1999.

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• When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.

  Sylvia Plath

  Men, White Man, Differences

  Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.61, Faber & Faber

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• The decline of witch-belief was . . . entirely the product of religious skepticism. . . . The Catholic Church did not reform itself on this matter; it was forced by outside pressure to reform. To be sure, the Protestant churches were no better in this regard; it is simply that they had less time - only two or three centuries - to engage in the torching of witches. After all, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, stated quite correctly that disbelief in witches meant a disbelief in the Bible.

  S. T. Joshi

  Religious, Two, Catholic

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• I already shot my wad on the Protestants!

  Gene Siskel

  Shots

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• I could play a cop, I could play a crook, I could play a lawyer, I could play a dentist, I could play an art critic-I could play the guy next door. I am the guy next door. I could play Catholic, Jewish, Protestant. As a matter of fact, when I did The Odd Couple, I would do it a different way each night. On Monday I'd be Jewish, Tuesday Italian, Wednesday Irish-German-and I would mix them up. I did that to amuse myself, and it always worked.

  Walter Matthau

  Monday, Art, Couple

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• Clergymen tend to be unreliable and pompous figures. Seldom Jewish rabbis, less often Catholic priests, but Protestant ministers tend to be... not really very admirable. Not necessarily evil, but silly. And wrong, of course.

  Charlton Heston

  Silly, Evil, Catholic

  Interview with Ken Masugi and Colleen Ryor, ashbrook.org. October 6, 1995.

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• We all have views on what our Irishness means to us. Two members of the band were born in England and were raised in the Protestant faith. Bono's mother was Protestant and his father was Catholic. I was brought up Catholic. U2 are a living example of the kind of unity of faith and tradition that is possible in Northern Ireland.

  Larry Mullen, Jr.

  Mother, Father, Mean

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• This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together– black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu– a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Black And White, Ideas, House

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.17, Beacon Press

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• In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Struggle, Catholic

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Come Friday, the world will see what the Protestant people really think of this so-called peace process, which is really a surrender process.

  Ian Paisley

  Friday, Thinking, People

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• I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Believe, America

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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