Quotes and Sayings about Doctrine
"To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked."
- Thomas Babington
(Related: Nature, Crime, Doctrine, Man, Persecution, Will)
"A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world."
- Tony Benn
(Related: Faith, Difference, Doctrine, World)
"Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Belief, Optimism, Doctrine, Ugly)
"The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology."
- H. P. Blavatsky
(Related: History, Men, Anthropology, Doctrine, Property, Theories)
"To his doctrines I owe my great and glorious ambition for the sex to which I proudly belong and whose independence I shall defend until my dying day."
- Rosa Bonheur
(Related: Sex, Ambition, Day, Dying, Independence)
"For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey."
- Joseph Brodsky
(Related: Departure, Doctrine, Journey)
"This doctrine of Christ and of the apostles, from which the true faith of the primitive church was received, the apostles at first delivered orally, without writing, but later, not by any human counsel but by the will of God, they handed it on in the Scriptures."
- Martin Chemnitz
(Related: Faith, God, Church, Christ, Doctrine, First, Will, Writing)
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
- Noam Chomsky
(Related: Saying, Sound, Will)
"The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Soul, Comfort, Doctrine, Immortality)
"This Republic was called into being, organized, and is upheld, by a great political doctrine."
- Caleb Cushing
(Related: Being, Doctrine)
"Men of New England, I hold you to the doctrines of liberty which ye inherit from your Puritan forefathers."
- Caleb Cushing
(Related: Men, England, Liberty)
"To compel the nation with challenge the traditional American doctrine of freedom of the seas, every man and every ship in the navy is solemnly pledged."
- Josephus Daniels
(Related: American, Challenge, Doctrine, Freedom, Man, Nation, Navy)
"But the more we search the Scriptures, the more we perceive, in this doctrine, the fundamental truth of the gospel - that truth which gives to redemption its character, and to all other truths their real power."
- John Nelson Darby
(Related: Power, Truth, Character, Doctrine)
"There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity."
- Robertson Davies
(Related: Society, Time, Doctrine, Nonsense, Stupidity, Will)
"It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions."
- Christopher Dawson
(Related: History, Life, Nature, Christian, Doctrine, Human nature, Value)
"The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods."
- Wilhelm Dilthey
(Related: Doctrine, Expression, Light, Now, Psychology)
"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Related: Men, Women, America, Blood, Dissent, Doctrine, May, Spirit)
"What President Bush did in his doctrine of preemptive strike and in his war in Afghanistan and in Iraq was to turn even his allies in Europe negatively toward America."
- Louis Farrakhan
(Related: War, Afghanistan, America, Doctrine, Europe, Iraq, President)
"There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true."
- Francois Fenelon
(Related: Happiness, Virtue, Doctrine, Misery, Religious, Road, Vice, World)
"I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Experience, Doctrine)
"We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: Money, Doctrine, Poor)
"I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality."
- Mohandas Gandhi
(Related: Morality, Conflict, Doctrine, Reason, Religious)
"I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike."
- James A. Garfield
(Related: Love, Men, Events)
"There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind."
- A. Bartlett Giamatti
(Related: Society, Answers, Doctrine, Lust, Mind, Right)
"Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth."
- Khalil Gibran
(Related: Truth, Doctrine)
"They're after one world religion and one world government. That's why they've attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine."
- Hutton Gibson
(Related: Religion, Government, Control, Church, Doctrine, World)
"To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind."
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(Related: Doctrine, Mind, Old, Propaganda, Weakness)
"Christ's riches are unsearchable, and this doctrine of the gospel is the field this treasure is hidden in."
- Thomas Goodwin
(Related: Christ, Doctrine, Treasure)
"David and his followers taught no new doctrines, in their dispersion or when they came to power, that can be brought to countenance thee at all in shaving off thy beard."
- Lord George Gordon
(Related: Power, Followers)
"I think that the core doctrines of Christianity - the incarnation, the resurrection, life after death-these are as strong as ever. In fact, the belief in life after death has increased in this century."
- Andrew Greeley
(Related: Death, Life, Belief, Christianity, Fact)
"The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians."
- Angelina Grimke
(Related: Power, Blind, Doctrine, Obedience, Republicans)
"Compare Scripture with Scripture. False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves."
- William Gurnall
(Related: Scripture)
"Godliness, as well as the doctrine of our faith, is a mystery."
- William Gurnall
(Related: Faith, Doctrine, Mystery)
"The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society."
- Roy Hattersley
(Related: Society, Doctrine, Principles)
"By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed."
- O. Henry
(Related: Nature, Habit, Choice)
"And what sort of philosophical doctrine is thi - that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others."
- Auberon Herbert
(Related: Doctrine, Rights, Numbers)
"It is a thoroughly anti-christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people."
- Charles Hodge
(Related: Life, Power, God, People, Church, Doctrine, Spirit)
"The Galatians are severely censured for giving heed to false doctrines, and are called to pronounce even an apostle anathema, if he preached another gospel."
- Charles Hodge
(Related: Giving)
"Beneath all differences of doctrine or discipline there exists a fundamental agreement as to the simple, absolute essentials in religion."
- Julia Ward Howe
(Related: Religion, Discipline, Agreement, Doctrine)
"We had, after all, no other recourse to protect ourselves, no other document, let's say, than the Monroe Doctrine. So that could be cited as a cause for intervention if and when it might become necessary."
- E. Howard Hunt
(Related: Cause, Doctrine)
"So you're quite right that when... as the Cold War grew and expanded out of Europe, we ourselves had to take refuge behind the shield of the Monroe Doctrine."
- E. Howard Hunt
(Related: War, Doctrine, Europe, Right)
"The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Men, Time, Doctrine, Fiction, Sense)
"The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Doctrine, Man, Question, Will)
"I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men."
- Robert Green Ingersoll
(Related: Men, Thought, Crime, Doubt, Liberty, Will)
"I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Philosophy)
"What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more."
- Samuel Johnson
"When a person is determined to believe something, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms them in their faith."
- Junius
(Related: Faith, Absurdity, Doctrine)
"One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine."
- Junius
(Related: Doctrine, Fact, Law, Today, Yesterday)
"Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness."
- Immanuel Kant
(Related: Happiness, Morality, Doctrine, May)
"The doctrine of original sin claims that all men sinned in Adam; but whether they did or whether it is merely a fact that all men sin does not basically affect the problem of suffering."
- Walter Kaufmann
(Related: Men, Doctrine, Fact, Sin, Suffering)
"In the early centuries of Islam, the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law."
- Aly Khan
(Related: Legal, Islam, Doctrine, Law, Liberty, Principles, Schools)
"A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is created."
- Jeane Kirkpatrick
(Related: War, People, Wealth, Class, Doctrine, Nothing, Poverty, Solution)
"Now since France has three times in sixty years failed to obtain practical results from Political revolutions, all Europe is apt to press forward into new Social doctrine to regulate the future."
- Lajos Kossuth
(Related: Doctrine, Europe, France, Future, Now, Press, Results, Years)
"The real breeders of discontent and alien doctrines of government and philosophies subversive of good citizenship are such as these who take the law into their own hands."
- John L. Lewis
(Related: Government, Citizenship, Discontent, Law)
"The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government."
- John L. Lewis
(Related: Government, Life, America, Living, Production, Will, Workers)
"I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity."
- Joseph Lister
(Related: Christianity)
"It sets its face rightfully against the doctrines of the Anarchist and the Communist, who seek to solve the social problems not by patient endeavor, but by brutal destruction."
- Henry Cabot Lodge
(Related: Destruction, Problems)
"What I did was, I went and collected every bit of information from Adventist publishing houses in the basic areas of doctrine covered in the book Questions on Doctrine."
- Walter Martin
(Related: Doctrine, Houses, Information, Publishing, Questions)
"The Doctrine of the Trinity teaches that within the unity of the one Godhead there are three separate persons who are coequal in power, nature, and eternity."
- Walter Martin
(Related: Nature, Power, Doctrine, Eternity, Trinity, Unity)
"My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it."
- Lord Melbourne
(Related: Doctrine, Doubt, First, Popular)
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: Age, Wisdom, Distrust, Doctrine)
"There is a kind of thinking in the Church that wants to reduce the priest to a mere functionary, a managing director, where administration rather than doctrine and worship are to determine the form of the Church."
- Arthur Middleton
(Related: Church, Doctrine, Thinking, Worship)
"Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Action, Difference, Doctrine, Evil, Example, Poets, World)
"Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Beliefs, Ethics, Laws)
"Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and today a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines."
- Maria Mitchell
(Related: Church, Care, Today, Yesterday)
"A rule I have had for years is: to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. His is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but it is He Himself we have."
- Dwight L. Moody
(Related: Friend, Christ, Doctrine, Years)
"Among the southern tribes, on the contrary, hats were sometimes worn in the dance, although this was not considered in strict accordance with the doctrine."
- James Mooney
(Related: Dance, Doctrine)
"The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative."
- Benito Mussolini
(Related: Doctrine, Fascism, State)
"Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government."
- Richard M. Nixon
(Related: Government, Doctrine, President, Questioning, Separation)
"Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies."
- Thomas Love Peacock
(Related: Names)
"The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war unprecedented in our history; and he failed to build a true international coalition."
- Nancy Pelosi
(Related: War, History, Doctrine, Iraq, President, Radical)
"The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero."
- Steven Pinker
(Related: Doctrine, Fact, Mind)
"Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Age, History, Science, Character, Creation, Doctrine, Theology, Universe)
"Those theologians who are beginning to take the doctrine of creation very seriously should pay some attention to science's story."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Science, Attention, Beginning, Creation, Doctrine)
"I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Science, Creation, Doctrine, Scientists, Temptation, Theology)
"A true servant of God will never teach a false doctrine. He will never deny new revelation. He never will tell you that the canon of scripture is full, or that the New Testament is the last revelation ever intended to be given to man."
- Orson Pratt
(Related: God, Doctrine, Man, New testament, Scripture, Will)
"Will is nothing more than a particular case of the general doctrine of association of ideas, and therefore a perfectly mechanical thing."
- Joseph Priestley
(Related: Ideas, Doctrine, Nothing, Will)
"Meanwhile the Church more and more provided for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, by practically chaining His influence to the hierarchy and the sacraments."
- Robert Rainy
(Related: Church, Doctrine, Influence, Spirit)
"Every generation tries to put its doctrine on a high shelf where the children can not reach it."
- Walter Rauschenbusch
(Related: Children, Doctrine)
"The success of those doctrines would also subvert the Federal Constitution, change the character of the Federal Government, and destroy our rights in respect to slavery."
- John H. Reagan
(Related: Change, Success, Government, Character, Constitution, Rights, Respect, Slavery)
"There are times in history where a particular doctrine becomes a symbol of a greater problem."
- Pat Robertson
(Related: History, Doctrine, Symbol)
"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life."
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: Life, Doctrine)
"The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify."
- Elihu Root
(Related: Peace, Action, Argument, Causes, Doctrine, Feeling, Propaganda)
"In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Men, Time, America, Doctrine, Opinion)
"Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard."
- Jose Saramago
(Related: America, Will)
"To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man."
- Michael Servetus
(Related: Doctrine, Man)
"My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt."
- Anna Sewell
(Related: Power, Cruelty, Doctrine, Guilt, Nothing, Wrong)
"I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government."
- Gerrit Smith
(Related: Government, People, Doctrine, Property)
"When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at least for a time, feel himself to be any where but at home, amongst his new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning."
- Gerrit Smith
(Related: Home, Time, Thoughts, Man, Slavery)
"It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of institutions."
- Goldwin Smith
(Related: History, Doctrine, Evolution, Influence, Investigation, Study)
"Mormonism is the pure doctrine of Jesus Christ; of which I myself am not ashamed."
- Joseph Smith, Jr.
(Related: Christ, Doctrine)
"As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate."
- Arlen Specter
(Related: Constitution, Doctrine, Sound)
"I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life."
- Charles Spurgeon
(Related: Life, God, People, Determination, Doctrine, Nothing)
"Government itself is founded upon the great doctrine of the consent of the governed, and has its cornerstone in the memorable principle that men are endowed with inalienable rights."
- Leland Stanford
(Related: Government, Men, Doctrine, Rights)
"I ever will profess myself the greatest friend to those whose actions best correspond with their doctrine; which, I am sorry to say, is too seldom the case amongst those nations who pretend most to civilization."
- J. G. Stedman
(Related: Civilization, Friend, Actions, Doctrine, Nations, Will)
"Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."
- Harlan Stone
(Related: Equality, Nature, People, Ancestry, Doctrine)
"I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation."
- William Graham Sumner
(Related: Childhood, Economy, Man, Practice, Sons)
"It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land."
- William Graham Sumner
(Related: Jealousy, Land, Property, Remarkable)
"I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things."
- Billy Sunday
(Related: Impression, Church, Causes, Doctrine, Effect, Rules, Today)
"Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: Ideas, Dictators, Perfection)
"An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: Doctrine, Doubt, Example, Religious)
"If someone doesn't know their Old Testament, they don't know right doctrine, right correction, and they can't be equipped for good works."
- Randall Terry
(Related: Correction, Doctrine, Old, Right)
"You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine."
- Tertullian
(Related: Faith, Quality, Discipline, Doctrine)
"In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
(Related: Love, Country, Majority, Property, states, United, World)
"It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement."
- Anthony Trollope
(Related: Honesty, Doctrine, Man, Now, Politicians, Quick)
"This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Men, Doctrine, May, State)
"First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Men, Government, Choice, Doctrine, First, May, Socialism, State)
"I have always believed, heretofore, in the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal; but of late it appears that some men are born slaves, and I regret that they are not black, so all the world might know them."
- Benjamin F. Wade
(Related: Men, Independence, Regret, World)
"Sometimes it leads me even to hesitate whether I am strictly correct in my idea that all men are born to equal rights, for their conduct seems to me to contravene the doctrine."
- Benjamin F. Wade
(Related: Men, Idea, Doctrine, Rights)
"Doctrines provide an architecture for both Republican and Democrat presidents to carry out policies."
- Malcolm Wallop
(Related: Architecture, Republican)
"I'm a participant in the doctrine of constructive ambiguity."
- Vernon A. Walters
(Related: Ambiguity, Doctrine)
"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place."
- Earl Warren
(Related: Education, Doctrine, Public)
"A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Purpose, Being, Doctrine)
"The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought."
- H. G. Wells
(Related: Thought, Doctrine, Heaven, Teaching)
"But God will have a people upon the earth to maintain the Bible, and the Bible only, as the standard of all doctrines and the basis of all reforms."
- Ellen G. White
(Related: God, People, Bible, Earth, Will)
"The Bible is our rule of faith and doctrine."
- Ellen G. White
(Related: Faith, Bible, Doctrine)
"To forgive and to be forgiven are the two points of holy magnificence and holy modesty; round these two centres the whole doctrine of largesse revolves."
- Charles Williams
(Related: Doctrine, Magnificence, Modesty)
"Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(Related: Body, Doctrine, Logic, World)
"The purest expression of the doctrine of Liberalism was probably that of Benjamin Constant."
- Francis Parker Yockey
(Related: Doctrine, Expression, Liberalism)