Self Help Books

"It is impossible to rightfully govern the world without God and the Bible."

"God helps those who help themselves"

"No sciences are better attested than the religion of the Bible."

"[The Bible] is the best gift God has given to men. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it, we could not know right from wrong."

"As a historical document, as a cultural document, it absolutely should be taught in schools. As a religious document, that’s up to parents and to faith leaders off-campus."

"I don't need a Bible to tell me I'm doing wrong a hundred million times in my life. Everything I did wrong in my life I am suffering a long time. It's coming back and back and back and back to me for years. I am not ashamed to tell myself what I am doing wrong, but there must always be a way to understand that's all I can do."

"It is impossible to understand the significance of Christ without understanding the whole history of Biblical religion."

"I began to read the Bible long before I could understand it. Now it seems strange to me that there should have been a time when my spirit was deaf to its wondrous harmonies ... But how shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the Bible? For years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and inspiration; and I love it as I love no other book."

"“This can be seen as an attempt to appease the planter class saying, ‘Look, we're coming here. We want to help uplift materially these Africans here but we’re not going to be teaching them anything that could incite rebellion,’” Anthony Schmidt, the Museum of the Bible’s associate curator of Bible and Religion, tells Martin. That meant the missionaries needed a radically pared down version of the Bible. “A typical Protestant edition of the Bible contains 66 books, a Roman Catholic version has 73 books and an Eastern Orthodox translation contains 78 books,” the museum says in a statement. “By comparison, the astoundingly reduced Slave Bible contains only parts of 14 books.”"

"When 19th-century British missionaries arrived in the Caribbean to convert enslaved Africans, they came armed with a heavily edited version of the Bible. Any passage that might incite rebellion was removed; gone, for instance, were references to the exodus of enslaved Israelites from Egypt. Today, just three copies of the so-called “Slave Bible” are known to exist."

"Reading the Bible is the fast track to atheism. Reading the Bible means starting at "In the beginning..." and throwing it down with disgust at "...the grace of the lord Jesus be with all. Amen." I'm sure there are lots of religious people who've read the Bible from start to finish and kept their faith, but in my self-selected sample, all the people I know who have done that are atheists."

"Take some time and put the Bible on your summer reading list. Try and stick with it cover to cover. Not because it teaches history; we've shown you it doesn't. Read it because you'll see for yourself what the Bible is all about. It sure isn't great literature. If it were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and some quotable phrases, but there's no plot, no structure, there's a tremendous amount of filler, and the characters are painfully one-dimensional. Whatever you do, don't read the Bible for a moral code: it advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition and murder. Read it because: we need more atheists — and nothin will get you there faster, than readin' the damn Bible."

"It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza."

"The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts."

"Their own Bible their Revelation destroys all the moral perceptions they heap upon him [God] unless indeed they call those qualities perfections that every other man's reason and common sense call imperfections, odious vices and brutal wickedness. Nay more he who reads our Buddhist scriptures written for the superstitious masses will fail to find in them a demon so vindictive, unjust, so cruel and so stupid as the celestial tyrant upon whom the Christians prodigally lavish their servile worship and on whom their theologians heap those perfections that are contradicted on every page of their Bible. Truly and veritably your theology has created her God but to destroy him piecemeal. Your church is the fabulous Saturn, who begets children but to devour them."

"The Bible contains one creation story in Genesis and it is very similar to some indigenous creation stories, except that in many of ours, we had the assistance of animals or other elements to help us in our first being."

"The task of unveiling the hidden truth demands some knowledge of Cosmogenesis, of the emanation of the Universe from the Absolute, the finite from the Infinite, and of the successive cycles, major and minor, of involution and evolution. In addition, both knowledge of the Symbolical Language, its purposes, methods and classical symbols, and the faculty of analysing and interpreting historical metaphors, are necessary to open the casket containing the treasures of concealed wisdom—the Holy Bible itself."

"The mission of the Jews and the purpose of the erudite and initiated authors of the Bible was, I submit, to preserve, to enunciate and to deliver to humanity this wisdom of the Chaldeo-Hebrew Sanctuaries. It is for this and not for lordship over the Earth, I suggest, that the Jews were a chosen people, a nation or “kingdom of priests” in very truth. May not their tribulations have partly arisen from their neglect of this mission, and may not their earthly wanderings and centuries of physical homelessness have followed upon and resulted from their departure from their true Sanctuary and the real purpose for which they were “chosen”? Happily the light still shines, however deeply veiled, in and through this marvellous record of the Scriptures of the Hebrew Race."

"The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals."

"Billions of people, including many scientists, continue to use religious scriptures as a source of authority, but these texts are no longer a source of creativity. Think, for example, about the acceptance of gay marriage or female clergy by the more progressive branches of Christianity. Where did this acceptance originate? Not from reading the Bible, St Augustine or Martin Luther. Rather, it came from reading texts like Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality or Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Yet Christian true-believers – however progressive – cannot admit to drawing their ethics from Foucault and Haraway. So they go back to the Bible, to St Augustine and to Martin Luther, and make a very thorough search. They read page after page and story after story with the utmost attention, until they find what they need: some maxim, parable or ruling that if interpreted creatively enough means that God blesses gay marriages and that women can be ordained to the priesthood. They then pretend the idea originated in the Bible, when in fact it originated with Foucault. The Bible is kept as a source of authority, even though it is no longer a true source of inspiration."

"The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed."

"To keep us occupied, he therefore set us to read a chapter of the Bible each day and write a piece on it. The idea was to teach us the beauty of the English language. We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with “And.” When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with “And,” I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible?""

"That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error."

"Those humble but indomitable workers, to whom later generations referred by the collective name of Baale Masorah, Masters of Tradition, performed in obscurity their Herculean task of guarding the Biblical Text against loss or variation."

"As a matter of fact, however, it may be clearly stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a single biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact details historical statements in the Bible."

"The Bible is stamped with a Specialty of Origin, and an immeasurable distance separates it from all competitors."

"There is a most amazing perspicuity in the sacred writings, beyond any to be found in human composures; according to a common observation, though there are in them such depths that an elephant may swim, yet such shallows that a lamb may wade in them; that is, though there is enough to exercise the talents of men of the greatest capacities to search into, and find out the things contained therein, yet what are essential to salvation, or nevessary to be known by men with respect to their faith and practice, are clear, and plain, and easy to be understood by an enlightened mind, though otherwise of the meanest capacity. This divine book contains in it interesting things to persons of every rank and class, of every different capacity, of every age and sex: it is written for the use of all sorts, men, women, and children, and therefore the main and essential things in it are written in such a manner as to be understood by them all: thus Timothy from a child knew the holy Scriptures, 2 Tim. iii. 15. and herein the wisdom of God is wonderfully displayed..."

"My light, the Torah, says God to man, is in thy hand; but thy light, the soul, is in my hand. Take care of my light, so that I may take care of thy light."

"In giving his Torah to Israel, God is like a king who gives his only daughter in marriage, and makes it a condition with her husband that there shall always be a room kept for him in their house. If we wish to have the Torah, we must have God also. This is the meaning of the words 'Make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell therein.'"

"I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century)."

"Thou shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two? No graven images may be, except the currency: not at all; for for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse: church on Sunday to attend serve to keep the world thy friend: thy parents; that is, all whom advancement may befall: Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive Officiously to keep alive: Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it: Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat: Bear not false witness: let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly: Thou shalt not covet; but tradition Approves all forms of competition. The sum of all is, thou shalt love, If any body, God above: At any rate shall never labour More than thyself to love thy neighbour."

"The initiate Paul gives a number of clues about this hidden wisdom. In writing to the church at Corinth he says: I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it, and even yet you are not ready. (1 Cor. 3:2)... So as we read the Bible let us perceive it with seeing eyes and inner understanding. The Christ indicates that when we do that we will discover the pearl of great price. Can we sense the inner meaning of this? When we make that discovery we will be ready to give up all our accumulated treasures for this One Great Jewel! Are we ready?"

"If we read the 13th chapter of Matthew with open eyes we find that Jesus' disciples were deeply puzzled as to why he spoke to the curious crowds in these word pictures, with such deeply hidden meanings. So they put the question to Jesus. He replied: This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. But He was planting the good seed deep in their lives to ponder upon, so that hopefully some time it would sprout, grow, and as He suggested bring forth grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty.... But to His disciples Jesus said: Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. As you and I read the Bible let us ask ourselves: How acute is our esoteric vision and hearing? Geoffrey Hodson, a theosophical writer, in his book The Hidden Wisdom in the Holy Bible, Vol. I, gives us excellent clues to the symbolic meanings of the Bible. One of his suggestions is that we look at many biblical passages not for historical information, but that we consider them as happenings within our lives..."

"Why did Christian teaching not bear any obvious information relating to esoteric knowledge, including reincarnation?... the Bible is full of esoteric wisdom. But it may take some insight to discover it. It seems to be the case, especially in the past, that esoteric information, when embodied in literature made available to the public, was veiled beneath exoteric or more obvious interpretations. For if the deep symbolic meanings in biblical literature had been made obvious, on the surface, it is questionable whether the Bible could have survived, especially through the dark ages. It probably would have been discarded as irrelevant. It seems to be an indication of genius on the part of many writers, whose works later were gathered together to make up the Bible, that they produced material which could be interpreted on at least three different levels. The first level is of course a quite literal one. The second is a bit more sophisticated but still subject to interpretation by the concrete mind of the orthodox religionist. The third carries an esoteric meaning."

"Too many of our best scholars, themselves indoctrinated from infancy in a religion of one kind or another based upon the Bible, are so locked into the idea of their own god as a supernatural fact — something final, not symbolic of transcendence, but a personage with a character and will of his own — that they are unable to grasp the idea of a worship that is not of the symbol but of its reference, which is of a mystery of much greater age and of more immediate inward reality than the name-and-form of any historical ethnic idea of a deity, whatsoever … and is of a sophistication that makes the sentimentalism of our popular Bible-story theology seem undeveloped."

"An eye for an eye is not a call for revenge, it is an argument for fairness. In the time of the Bible, it was standard to take a life in exchange for an eye. But the Bible said, No, the punishment should fit the crime. Only an eye for an eye, nothing more. It is not vindictive, it is mitigatory."

"The Bible may be an antiquated book to many, but for the believer it is actually God speaking. God says there are some things that are evil and some things that are good. That's simple enough for even a child to understand. Certain things are right; other things are wrong. But they are right or wrong because God says so. We are right when we do God's will; we are wrong when we do not."

"The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it."

"To accept the Bible as a “revelation” and nail belief to a literal translation, is worse than absurdity — it is a blasphemy against the Divine majesty of the “Unseen.” If we had to judge of the Deity, and the world of spirits, by its human interpreters, now that philology proceeds with giant-strides on the fields of comparative religions, belief in God and the soul’s immortality could not withstand the attacks of reason for One century more. That which supports the faith of man in God and a spiritual life to come is intuition; that divine outcome of our inner-self, which defies the mummeries of the Roman Catholic priest, and his ridiculous idols; the thousand and one ceremonies of the Brahman and his idols; and the Jeremiads of the Protestant preacher, and his desolate and arid creed, with no idols, but a boundless hell and damnation hooked on at the end. p. 435, Book I"

"The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but, if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that."

"If the Bible is only human lore, and not divine truth, then we have no real answer to those who say, "Let's pick the best out of all religions and blend it all into Pan-Deism - one world religion with one god made out of many"."

"Without the Bible, we would not know of His Church then, nor would we have the fulness of His gospel now. I love the Bible, its teachings, its lessons, and its spirit. I love the Old Testament’s compelling, profound stories and its great prophets testifying of the coming of Christ. I love the New Testament’s apostolic travels and miracles and the letters of Paul. Most of all, I love its eyewitness accounts of the words and the example and the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. I love the perspective and peace that come from reading the Bible."

""Thou shalt not get found out" is not one of God's commandments, and no man can be saved by trying to keep it."

"Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four, ...are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John."

"I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing"

"In the Old Testament stories, … the sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the everyday that the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated but basically inseparable."

"If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

"No other book in the western tradition has been subject to such extensive interpretation, or to interpretation based on such incompatible principles as, for example, on the one hand, the principles of higher criticism which treat the Bible as a secular document, and, on the other hand, the principles of exegesis peculiar to a text considered to be the sacred and revealed word of God... No matter what the topic under which the Bible is cited [in the Syntopicon], the reader is always left quite free to decide that issue for himself. He can always read a biblical passage either as a portion of divine revelation, or as human writing no different from other human literature."

"I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditations."

"The history of every individual man should be a Bible."