Religion

"The prophets in Hebrew Scripture and Jesus in the Gospels are figures in conflict with the religious establishment. They denounce the use of religion to sacralize unjust privilege and to ignore the needs of the people. Prophetic faith announces a God who is active in history, to overturn an unjust social order and to transform the world into a new social order where there will be no more war, no more injustice, where justice between people and harmony with nature has been restored and all creation will be in communion with God."

"And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"

"Would to God that all the LORD's people were Prophets."

"If I have eschewed the word prophet, I do not wish to attribute to myself such lofty title at the present time, for whoever is called a prophet now was once called a seer; since a prophet, my son, is properly speaking one who sees distant things through a natural knowledge of all creatures. And it can happen that the prophet bringing about the perfect light of prophecy may make manifest things both human and divine, because this cannot be done otherwise, given that the effects of predicting the future extend far off into time."

"As it was, deformed and made mad by his hellish life, he had become what prophets had probably always been: not frauds, for they themselves believed what they had seen, but pitiful creatures, dreaming some salvation from this crushing world in their malfunctioning brains. Yaum ed din, the crazy little man, the prophet Aida’s John the Baptist, had said: the Day of Religion, the Muslim’s term for Judgment Day. Yaum ed din, the last consolation of the crazy and the weak."

"... it is always the habit of man to reincarnate his heroes and divinities, so that and Odin tend to become indistinguishable, and Moses is forever reappearing—in our own time as Joseph Smith, Mary Baker G. Eddy and a long series of lesser prophets. No doubt Noah, as a small boy, heard in his school of an Ur-Noah, and played with a toy ark. And the Ur-Noah that he heard of probably had predecessors of his own."

"No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming."

"And those dwelling on the earth rejoice over them and enjoy themselves, and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those dwelling on the earth. And after the three and a half days spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon those beholding them."

"No prophet is accepted in his own country."

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit…"

"A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house."

"[Religious leader Abdullah] Hashem teaches that even prophets made mistakes, as only God is infallible by nature. However, Jesus and Muhammad made only minor occasional mistakes and Muhammad, his daughter Fatimah[, and] the Twelve Imams can be called inherently infallible, and the Twelve Mahdis, including the Qaim/Riser, are in the category of “earned infallibility.” This does not mean that the covenant of Muhammad is still in force, and at any rate we do not know the integrality of his teachings, as the Quran that we have today is incomplete and corrupted."

"While predicting the future is a rare gift, testifying for the truth is a duty for every woman and man of conscience. …A prophet, [Roman Catholic archbishop Óscar] Romero added, is one who has an “undisturbed conscience.” This is an interesting statement. Only those who are firmly rooted in conscience as their moral compass may calmly tell the truth about injustice and corruption, no matter the risks. And risks there are since prophets easily make enemies."

"When you spread out your hands in prayer,"

"The striking surprise is that prophets of Israel were tolerated at all by their people. To the patriots, they seemed pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to the men in authority, seditious."

"The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself."

"Prophets don't know everything!"

"The Prophet ... remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life "a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad" [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness."

"I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away."

"I shall always consider the best guesser the best prophet."

"The prophet's mantle, ere his flight began, Dropt on the world — a sacred gift to man."

"The Roman came into the Promised Land that had become less and less as promised. The rich got along quite well with the foreign occupation; it provided protection from desperate peasants and patriotic resistance fighters. It provided protection from prophets who could be labeled "agitators" now, without any qualms."

"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

"The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord asked me, "What do you see, Amos?""

"To determine whether a man is indeed a prophet, one must consider whether he has been following the way of "holiness" (qedushah) and "separation" (perishut). A prophet separates himself from the vanities and the intrigues of the times and "from the general ways of the people, who walk in the darkness of the time." The path of holiness, like the "way of the wise men," is a preparation for theoria. The prophet trains himself to keep his mind completely clear of vain and empty matters."

"It is characteristic of the prophets that they do not receive their mission from any human agency, but seize it."

"The prophets ... hurled their "woe be unto you" against those who oppressed and enslaved the poor, those who joined field to field, and those who deflected justice by bribes. These were the typical actions leading to class stratification everywhere in the ancient world, and were everywhere intensified by the development of the city-state (polis)."

"Prognostics do not always prove prophecies, at least the wisest prophets make sure of the event first."

"Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth."

"Think of a woman by the side of a dying sister, or a sick child, or a sorrowing friend, or a broken-hearted and broken-spirited man, without a word of heaven in her mouth — without so much as the ability to whisper "Our Father," or even to point her finger hopefully towards the stars."

"We must watch over pious impressions, and cultivate them, or they will never become vigorous and enduring."

"What smoky prayers!—one earnest petition, and then a thousand wandering thoughts! What smoky faith!—a joyful sight of the Saviour's sufficiency, and then a long season of inward complacency occasioned by that sight! Self-righteous efforts to extirpate self-righteousness, and most legal endeavors to elaborate faith! What smoky affections!—gleams of love to God, followed by long intervals of estrangement!— spurts of self-sacrifice, followed by systematic worldliness! Fits of fury against some besetting sin, followed by abject surrender to its power! Ah, brethren, if the Saviour were human, He would set His foot on this fuming profession; He would extinguish this smoking flax."

"The piety that keeps the Sabbath with a great zeal of devotion, yet fails to keep its possessor honest on Monday, is not the kind that is stamped in the mint of heaven."

"The great moral lesson which Saul's history leaves for the instruction of mankind is this: That without true piety the finest qualities of character and the highest position in society will utterly fail to make a true and noble man. If Saul's heart had been true to God, he would have been one of the grandest specimens of humanity; but, lacking this true obedience to God, he made his life an utter failure, and his character a moral wreck."

"Young men, terminate, I beseech you, in your own experience, the sad divorce which has too often existed between intellect and piety. Take your stand, unswerving, heroic, by the altar of truth; and from that altar let neither sophistry nor ridicule expel you. Let your faith rest with a child's trust, with a martyr's grip, upon the truth as it is in Jesus."

"Young men, you who have any piety at all, what sort is it? Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out.of it in his rough play among the flowers? or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon? We need, believe me, the bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now."

"There is no piety in the world which is not the result of cultivation, and which cannot be increased by the degree of care and attention bestowed upon it."

"Christian piety annihilates the egotism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it."

"What you cannot lift before His pure eyes and think of Him while you enjoy, is not for you. Friendship, schemes, plans, ambitions, amusements, speculations, studies, loves, businesses — can you call on the name of the Lord while you put these cups to your lips? If not, fling them behind you."

"In periods that are wanting in inspiration piety always assumes the character of caution. It degenerates from a free and joyful devotion to a melancholy and anxious slavery."

"In theory, piety is reverence and love for God; and in practice, it is the exercise of all our powers in obedience to the Divine will. Combining the theory and practice, we have the richest treasure known on earth — love for God shown in obedience to God."

"Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given."

"The old Roman virtue of pietas (most beautifully illustrated in Virgil’s Aeneid) is much broader than just being religiously devout on Sundays. It is the virtue through which the divine, yes, but also the state, the homeland, the ancestors, and the family are honored and the duties owed them fulfilled. It is the bone-deep understanding that a country is not just an idea, that a people is not an amorphous pile of Lego bricks that can be changed out every other Thursday. …If pietas is loving what belongs to us more than what does not, we sin against it by doing the opposite. …A man who makes his children sleep in the basement so illegal aliens can sleep in their bedrooms is not charitable. And neither are the bishops just looking for good press and a fat bottom line."

"What's piety but the sense of guilt? People want to square off all the things they have wished and done to the beloved dead while they were alive."

"Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a God?"

"Piety, then, needs a counterpoise, something to prevent it from being exercised in an excessively rigid way; and this it has, in most intellectual temperaments, in the quality I would call playfulness. We speak of the play of the mind; and certainly the intellectual relishes the play of the mind for its own sake, and finds in it one of the major values in life. What one thinks of here is the element of sheer delight in intellectual activity. Seen in this guise, intellect may be taken as the healthy animal spirits of the mind, which come into exercise when the surplus of mental energies is released from the tasks required for utility and mere survival. “Man is perfectly human,” said Schiller, “only when he plays.” And it is this awareness of an available surplus beyond the requirements of mere existence that his maxim conveys to us. Veblen spoke often of the intellectual faculty as “idle curiosity”—but this is a misnomer in so far as the curiosity of the playful mind is inordinately restless and active. This very restlessness and activity gives a distinctive cast to its view of truth and its discontent with dogmas."

"Intellectual life has a certain spontaneous character and inner determination. It has also a peculiar poise of its own, which I believe is established by a balance between two basic qualities in the intellectual’s attitude toward ideas—qualities that may be designated as playfulness and piety."

"I consider piety to be openness to the unmanipulated mystery of life."

"Piety is not an end but a means to attain ... the highest degree of culture. This is why ... those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites."

"Klein: In the late 1600s, pirates targeted ships sailing from the Muslim Mughal Empire, including convoys taking wealthy pilgrims to Mecca. What role did attitudes toward Islam play into the colonies’ support of piracy?"