Best 212 quotes in «dogma quotes» category

The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.

The world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy.

Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute.

Too many are too obsessed by method. it becomes a dogma.

To be exact has naught to do with pedantry or dogma.

Under attack, sentiments harden into dogma.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

We crave, we deeply yearn for, release from the limitations of a dogma that declares separation, disunity, and judgment to be the essential condition of life.

We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.

...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.

You can't pay a landlord in dogma.

Act beyond reward - think beyond dogmas - and feel beyond differences.

Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant.

Zen has no theory. It is a non-theoretical approach into reality. It has no doctrine and no dogma - hence it has no church, no priest, no pope.

An Ego Mind is a destructive mind and a rational mind is a peaceful mind.

A true education opens the mind and lets us see the world with wonder and joy. It teaches us to accept change with love, and it teaches us to be harmonious with humanity and nature. If any education teaches us to close our minds, to accept dogma, and to violently inhibit questioning then that is not an education. That is a prison for the mind.

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican—we have only to recall the Inquisition—the hands that are now raised in appeals to the 'Most Merciful' are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!

Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.

Divinity retains the appearance of insight, when in reality it celebrates ignorance. Its tenets are so much clay, and when the clay sets, it becomes dogma.

Be skeptic, be doubtful, be rebellious towards every single dogma of the society. Only then there will be hope of progress for humanity.

Christianity is not a doctrine, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For 'consciousness of sin' is a real event an so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.

Death is an opportunity to shed all guilt; to step away from the dogma and contrivances of mankind; and to finally be unbound from all hindrances to knowledge.

Dogma not only results in the form of gross, zealous behavior such as the killing of ethnic minorities as part of a cultural cleansing, it is substantiated by warped statements of certainties that corrupt the mind and make you a slave to further the agenda the organization that initiated it.

Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place.

Dogma in power does have a unique chilling ingredient not exhibited by power, however ghastly, wielded for its own traditional sake.

Do not let your dogma to become your spiritual eclipse.

Don't just conform; ask questions. Don't just believe if it isn't your truth. Don't follow dogma; it is blindness. Just love; don't kill to go to heaven.

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner.

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice.

All children are curious and I wonder by what process this trait becomes developed in some and suppressed in others. I suspect again that schools and colleges help in the suppression insofar as they meet curiosity by giving the answers, rather than by some method that leads from narrower questions to broader questions. It is hard to satisfy the curiosity of a child, and even harder to satisfy the curiosity of a scientist, and methods that meet curiosity with satisfaction are thus not apt to foster the development of the child into the scientist. I don't advocate turning all children into professional scientists, although I think there would be advantages if all adults retained something of the questioning attitude, if their curiosity were less easily satisfied by dogma, of whatever variety.

Fear mankind most when he fights with a consuming passion for what he perceives to be true." ~ Demo Cratia.

For Abelard, the death of Christ on the Cross did not, strictly speaking, redeem man: it only offered him an example of supreme humility, charity, and self-sacrifice. Bernard asserts, against Abelard, that Christ became man precisely in order to redeem mankind from sin, deliver man from the power of the devil, and to become, instead of fallen Adam, the new head of a redeemed and sanctified human race. Jesus, says Saint Bernard, not only taught us justice but gave us justice. He not only showed us His love by dying for us on the Cross, but by the effects of His death He really and objectively causes His charity to exist and act in our hearts. In, doing so, He actually destroys sin in our souls and communicates to us a new life which is totally supernatural and divine. The effect of our redemption is therefore a complete and literal regeneration of those souls to whom its fruits are applied. Without this dogmatic basis the whole mystical theology of Saint Bernard would be incomprehensible. The purpose of all his mystical and ascetic teaching is to show us how to co-operate with the action of divine grace so that our redemption and regeneration may not remain a dead letter but may actually influence all our conduct and find expression in every part of our lives

For Christian writers, religious faith is not a rebellion against reason, but a revolt against the imprisonment of humanity within the cold walls of a rationalist dogmatism.

From the very beginning of the movement in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists shared a deep suspicion of the so-called Schriftgelehrten - the university-trained scholars who, they claimed artfully dodged the clear and simple teachings of Jesus by appealing to complex arguments and carefully crafted statements of doctrine. In other words, they confused theological discussions with lived faith.

Fusing the doctrines of Plotinus and Proclus with the creeds and beliefs of Christianity, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite combined the Neo-Platonic conviction of the fundamental oneness and luminous aliveness of the world with the Christian dogmas of the triune God, original sin and redemption. The universe is created, animated and unified by the perpetual self-realization of what Plotinus had called "the One," what the Bible had called "the Lord," and what he calls "the superessential Light.

God seemed to have become a brand, a packaging, and people purchase this trusted brand with such faith and devotion that they no longer care who the vendor is.

I am not interested in what I believe. I am not even sure what I believe. I am much more interested in what the church believes.

Human values never vanish between lives. They are born with us in every reincarnation to teach us the lessons we failed to learn in previous existences, either they’re related to dogma, justice, loneliness, love, darkness or light.

I am what I might term an unprejudiced sceptic. I am not given to either believing or disbelieving things 'on principle,' as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more, some of them not ashamed to boast of the insane fact.

Idealism and dogma are easier to sustain in a modern university campus than anywhere else on earth. There, you are free from the influences of home, subsidised into a fake independence which you think you have earned, spared the need to earn your bread, spared contact with the true drama of provincial life, and surrounded by arrogant and self-righteous people in their late teens, much like yourself - who think that they have discovered sex and idealism for the first time in the history of the human race.

Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself.

I don't like dogmas; i don't want to be kept in a box

I remember on one of my many visits with Thomas A. Edison, I brought up the question of Ingersoll. I asked this great genius what he thought of him, and he replied, 'He was grand.' I told Mr. Edison that I had been invited to deliver a radio address on Ingersoll, and would he be kind enough to write me a short appreciation of him. This he did, and a photostat of that letter is now a part of this house. In it you will read what Mr. Edison wrote. He said: 'I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed....' I mention this as an indication of the tremendous influence Ingersoll had upon the intellectual life of his time. To what extent did Ingersoll influence Edison? It was Thomas A. Edison's freedom from the narrow boundaries of theological dogma, and his thorough emancipation from the degrading and stultifying creed of Christianity, that made it possible for him to wrest from nature her most cherished secrets, and bequeath to the human race the richest of legacies. Mr. Edison told me that when Ingersoll visited his laboratories, he made a record of his voice, but stated that the reproductive devices of that time were not as good as those later developed, and, therefore, his magnificent voice was lost to posterity.

Human reason reduced to its own resources is perfectly worthless, not only for creating but also for preserving any political or religious association, because it only produces disputes, and, to conduct himself well, man needs not problems but beliefs. His cradle should be surrounded by dogmas, and when his reason is awakened, it should find all his opinions ready-made, at least all those relating to his conduct. Nothing is so important to him as prejudices, Let us not take this word in a bad sense. It does not necessarily mean false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, opinions adopted before any examination. Now these sorts of opinions are man’s greatest need, the true elements of his happiness, and the Palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither worship, nor morality, nor government. There must be a state religion just as there is a state policy; or, rather, religious and political dogmas must be merged and mingled together to form a complete common or national reason strong enough to repress the aberrations of individual reason, which of its nature is the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it produces only divergent opinions. All known nations have been happy and powerful to the extent that they have more faithfully obeyed this national reason, which is nothing other than the annihilation of individual dogmas and the absolute and general reign of national dogmas, that is to say, of useful prejudices. Let each man call upon his individual reason in the matter of religion, and immediately you will see the birth of an anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty. Likewise, if each man makes himself judge of the principles of government, you will at once see the birth of civil anarchy or the annihilation of political sovereignty. Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed. Man’s first need is that his nascent reason be curbed under this double yoke, that it be abased and lose itself in the national reason, so that it changes its individual existence into another common existence, just as a river that flows into the ocean always continues to exist in the mass of water, but without a name and without a distinct reality.

If you do not want to stop the wheels of progress; if you do not want to go back to the Dark Ages; if you do not want to live again under tyranny, then you must guard your liberty, and you must not let the church get control of your government. If you do, you will lose the greatest legacy ever bequeathed to the human race—intellectual freedom. Now let me tell you another thing. If all the energy and wealth wasted upon religion—in all of its varied forms—had been spent to understand life and its problems, we would today be living under conditions that would seem almost like Utopia. Most of our social and domestic problems would have been solved, and equally as important, our understanding and relations with the other peoples of the world would have, by now, brought about universal peace. Man would have a better understanding of his motives and actions, and would have learned to curb his primitive instincts for revenge and retaliation. He would, by now, know that wars of hate, aggression, and aggrandizement are only productive of more hate and more human suffering. The enlightened and completely emancipated man from the fears of a God and the dogma of hate and revenge would make him a brother to his fellow man. He would devote his energies to discoveries and inventions, which theology previously condemned as a defiance of God, but which have proved so beneficial to him. He would no longer be a slave to a God and live in cringing fear!

In all things in this life, we are told "It's okay if you don't make it the first time!", "It's fine if you don't get it right the first time, just try again and again!" We are told this in learning how to ride a bike, in learning how to bake a cake, in solving our math equations...in everything. Except marriage. Why are we all expected to get such an enormous and weighty thing right, the very first time, and if we don't we're considered as failures? I beg to differ! This is a stupidity!

Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo - charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose caprices they were helpless to govern, yet without which the conduct of daily life came to a standstill. Faith that the computer would switch on one more time and do as it was asked had more a religious than a rational cast. When the screen went black, the gods were angry.

In order for one to discover Divine Truth, one must be willing and able to go beyond the religious dogma that divides, rather than unites, humanity.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question. [A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]