Pulpit Quotes - Page 3

• Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.

  James A. Baldwin

  Theatre, Behind The Scenes, Illusion

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.

  Martyn Lloyd-Jones

  Men, Fire, Understanding

  Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2012). “Preaching and Preachers”, p.53, Hachette UK

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• Sadly, the doctrinal ignorance in the pulpits of today is being replicated in the doctrinal ignorance and indifference of the pews, and the people are not even seeing the picture, much less getting it.

  Albert Mohler

  Ignorance, People, Religion

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• Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

  Mark Twain

  Humble, Air, Hands

  Mark Twain, John S. Tuckey (1972). “Mark Twain's Fables of Man”, p.115, Univ of California Press

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• Many wise and true sermons are preached us everyday by unconscious ministers in street, school, office, or home; even a fair table may become a pulpit, if it can offer the good and helpful words which are never out of season.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Wise, Home, School

  Louisa May Alcott (2015). “The Complete Little Women Series: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo's Boys: The Beloved Classics of American Literature: The coming-of-age series based on the author’s own childhood experiences with her three sisters”, p.293, e-artnow

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• The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Taken, America, Evil

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Michael K. Honey (2011). “All Labor Has Dignity”, p.110, Beacon Press

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• Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ’s name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Men, Names

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• Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Fiction, May, Honest

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• None but praying leaders can have praying followers. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need pastors and evangelists who will set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers who can set the Church to praying.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Motivation, Inspiration, Leader

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• The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Civilization, People

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.51, Harvard University Press

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• It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin then?

  Mark Twain

  Law, Heaven, Suffering

  Mark Twain, John Sutton Tuckey (1980). “The Devil's Race-track: Mark Twain's Great Dark Writings : the Best from Which was the Dream? and Fables of Man”, p.21, Univ of California Press

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• We may put too high a premium on speech from platform and pulpit, at the bar and in the legislative hall, and pay dear for the whistle of our endless harangues. England and especially Germany, are less loquacious, and attend more to business. We let the eagle, and perhaps too often the peacock, scream.

  Bill Vaughan

  Eagles, Bars, May

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• If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, Taken, Heart

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• They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.

  Galileo Galilei

  Men, Religion, Doctrine

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• We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Men, Stories, He Man

  Charles H. Spurgeon (2010). “Lectures to My Students”, p.14, Zondervan

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• One classical role of the pulpit in Protestantism has been to 'preach sermons' which imply indoctrination more than education. Within this from of communication, there is an inherent, intrinsic inclination to intimidate, manipulate, and, hence, offend the person's most prized quality of humanness - his dignity.

  Robert H. Schuller

  Communication, Quality, Roles

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• Avan was as religious as the next young dragon with his way to make in the world-which is to say that he held many traditional beliefs which he had never paused to examine, attended church because it would have seemed strange not to, rarely paid much attention when he was there, and found piety out of the pulpit thoroughly misplaced.

  Jo Walton

  Religious, Dragons, Church

  Jo Walton (2003). “Tooth and Claw”, p.41, Macmillan

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• Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?

  Leslie Stephen

  Angel, Men, Laughing

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1903). “An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays”

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• MEMRI allows an audience far beyond the Arabic-speaking world to observe the wide variety of Arab voices speaking through the media, schoolbooks, and pulpits to their own people. What one hears is often astonishing, sometimes frightening, and always important. Most importantly, it includes the newly-emerging liberal voices of reform and hope, as well as disturbing echoes of ancient hatreds. Without the valuable research of MEMRI, the non-Arabic speaking world would not have this indispensable window.

  Richard Holbrooke

  Echoes, Media, Voice

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• Their spirituality was in nature, even though Emerson was a preacher on the pulpit, he ended up going out into nature for direct, face-to-face communication with God, if you want to call all of this creation part of God.

  Story Musgrave

  Communication, Going Out, Want

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• It won't ruin our movement if someone gets killed in an animal rights action. It's going to happen sooner or later. The Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front - sooner or later there's going to be someone getting hurt. And we have to accept that fact. It's going to happen. It's not going to hurt our movement. Our movement will go on. And it's important that we not let the bully pulpit of the FBI and the other oppression agencies stop us from what we're doing. They are the violent ones. They are the terrorists ... we have to keep doing what we're doing.

  Jerry Vlasak

  Hurt, Animal, Agency

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• I am an activist. I have a really big pulpit with my fiction and I love knowing that I can make people think.

  Jodi Picoult

  Thinking, Knowing, People

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• No mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand.

  Fred W. Friendly

  Kings, Power, Media

  "Presidential Television: A Twentieth Century Fund report". Book by Newton N. Minow, John Bartlow Martin and Lee M. Mitchell, 1973.

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• It is not insignificant that my first apprehension of the love of God was granted in an experience with my father. Nor is it generally uncommon that God is apprehended in experience. Nor, in fact, can the divine and human meeting happen any other way. God is not a God of the pulpit, though the pulpit proclaim him. He is a God in and of the histories of humankind. What is significant is that I should have to say so.

  Walter Wangerin

  God, Father, Should Have

  Walter Wangerin (2003). “This Earthly Pilgrimage: Tales and Observations on the Way”

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• Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian country has been “authorized by the Bible” and riveted and perpetuated by the pulpit.

  Helen H. Gardener

  Christian, Country, Atheism

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