Religion

"The only rational conclusion, then, seems to be that the Negro and the other darker races must look to themselves for freedom. Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within."

"Let us be today’s Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today’s church. With Christ’s light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God’s image, which is soiled in today’s humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful."

"True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence. In theistic language, it is to "know God" - not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence."

"One of 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."

"I not only questioned the possibility that salvation existed; I questioned whether God’s salvation was worth the earning. Again I began to see the struggle between God and Lucifer as nothing more than a squabble between petty princelings over who should possess power in a tiny, unimportant territory. The fate of the tenants of that territory did not much seem to matter to them; and even the reward of those tenants’ loyalty seemed thin enough to me."

"For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near (Rom. 13:11–12)."

"The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace."

"The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting."

"Can you help save one person...? That would be great wouldn’t it? The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world."

"A mighty fortress is our God, A sword and shield victorious; He breaks the cruel oppressors rod And wins salvation glorious."

"Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school; the deathbed convert who for decades had his cake and ate it, broke every law of God and man, wallowed in lust, and raped the earth."

"For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time."

"True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being."

"None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another’s salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light."

"Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes Décrétons le salut commun Pour que le voleur rende gorge Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge Battons le fer quand il est chaud."

"There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is the moment; the time is always now."

"The salvation of the people depended upon education."

"One may preach a covenant of grace more clearly than another... But when they preach a covenant of works for salvation, that is not truth."

"The Buddha said 'Salvation doesn't come from the sight of me. It demands strenuous effort and practise. So work hard and seek your own salvation constantly.'"

"In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation."

"People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too."

"After this I saw, and look! a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes; and there were palm branches in their hands. And they keep shouting with a loud voice, saying: “Salvation we owe to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.”"

"The world is such a marvel-it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation."

"No man can save himself alone."

"What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation."

"God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation."

"How much more should you make sure that you have “put on” the Lord Jesus Christ? This is your eternal salvation we are talking about, so obey the admonition to make your calling and election sure. There's nothing more important than your eternal salvation."

"For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it."

"Therefore, in the Islamic view, human beings are no more "fallen" than they are "saved". Because they are not "fallen", they have no need of a saviour. But because they are not "saved" either, they need to do good works - and do them ethically - which alone will earn them the desired "salvation", one must be in a predicament beyond the hope of ever escaping it. But men and women are not in that predicament. Humans are not ethically powerless They are not helpless puppets capable of neither good nor evil. They are capable of both. To "save" themselves by deeds and works is their pride and glory. To miss the chance and all the opportunities by is pitiable neglect; to miss the calling deliberately and to do evil is to earn punishment, to deserve damnation."

"No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief."

"Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment."

"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do."

"Ὁ ἀββᾶς Ἀρσένιος, ἔτι ὢν ἐν τῷ παλατίῳ, εὔξατο τῷ Θεῷ λέγων· Κύριε, ὁδήγησόν με πῶς σωθῶ. Καὶ ἦλθεν αὐτῷ φωνὴ λέγουσα· Ἀρσένιε, φεῦγε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ σώζῃ."

"“Never,” said the man to Rap’s silent consideration, “underestimate the stupidity of anybody who wants to be a saviour.”"

"Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest."

"The word save means an act which is done by someone, a positive act, including rescue. But the Dhamma saves not in that sense. The Dhamma teaches the human being to save oneself. It is not an act that other can do for someone. It is what one does to oneself. Therefore the term "Salvation" itself is not much relevant in the Buddhist concept. The Buddhist concept is Nibbana. Nibbana or Nirvana implying extinction, freedom, emancipation, liberation, release, deliverance, etc. However, the word ‘Salvation’ can also be used as an umbrella for Nibbana or Nirvana."

"Buddhism is primarily concerned with salvation of a human as a person who, unlike other living beings, has self-consciousness and free will and thereby alone has the potential to become aware of and emancipated from the transience common to all things in the universe. This is existentialist and personalistic aspect of Buddhism"

"Paul says that all humans are condemned under the law, and justifiably so. This is why salvation is through spiritual rebirth in love for Christ and not through obedience to the Judaic laws. (Rom. 3:28)"

"However, a cosmological dimension is the necessary basis for this Buddhist salvation: in Buddhism salvation is not from sin as rebellion against God, but emancipation from the cycle of birth and death which is part of transience of the universe. This is the cosmological aspect of Buddhism. These two aspects are inseparable; the more cosmological the basis of salvation"

"He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today; He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way. He lives, he lives salvation to impart; You ask me how I know he lives” He lives within my heart."

"Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we will never achieve."

"Poor victims of a civilization that hides its brutality beneath a veneer of culture and of grace, for them individually there is, alas! no salvation."

"Buddhist salvation is primarily concerned with individual persons, and is simply not concerned with humankind in general, for as is written in a sutra: ‘One is born alone, dies alone, comes alone and goes alone’."

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

"The process of salvation in Buddhism and Christianity are functions of their respective doctrines of ultimate reality and the nature of man. In a phrase we might sum up Buddhism’s view: "salvation is from the self". To start with the last; Buddhism insists that believes and practices self-slavation...As to salvation from self, Buddhism conceives belief in integrality and reality of the self to be the major obstacle to man’s salvation."

"I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted. The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous. As regards miracles, I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance."

"Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover."

"The theory of a soul of the world (anima mundi) is almost as ancient as the European Philosophy itelf....Plato conceived of it first. The doctrine of the world soul – not endorsed by Aristotle, except perhaps indirectly by implication of his theory of the active intellect – then received great philosophical emphasis in the Stoic and neo-Platonic schools, which essentially transformed it according to their respective metaphysical intuitions."

"By ‘strong world soul theory’, we designate that identifies god with the world soul. Finally when we say ‘classic world soul theory’, we refer to a theory in which the entire world is considered (on the analogy of human being) as a cosmic living being, the soul of which is the world soul and the body of which is Nature."

"I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace. Philosophy, with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its monoideistic bent, both "pass to the limit" and identify the something with a unique God who is the all-inclusive soul of the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the example which they set."