Quotes About Belief

As a scientist, I can not help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God.

I firmly believe, from what I have seen, that this is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as nature is concerned.

Whoever does not accept my teaching may not be saved -- for it is God's teaching and not mine.

I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: "You, Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine."

The Clergy is the greatest hindrance to faith.

He who knoweth and understandeth Christ's life, knoweth and understandeth Christ Himself; and in like manner, he who understandeth not His life, doth not understand Christ Himself. And he who believeth on Christ, believeth that His life is the best and noblest life that can be, and if a man believe not this, neither doth he believe on Christ Himself.

Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.

A Christian has no need of any law in order to be saved, since through faith we are free from every law. Thus all the acts of a Christian are done spontaneously, out of a sense of pure liberty.

The confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.

To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind--that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.

This error of free will is a special doctrine of the Antichrist.

Whoso hearkens not to God's voice, is an idolator, though he perform the highest and most heavy service of God.

I have grounded my preaching upon the literal word; he that pleases may follow me; he that will not may stay.

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.

Whoever teaches differently from what I have taught, or whoever condemns me therein, he condemns God and must remain a child of hell.

We must not regard what or how the world esteems us, so we have the Word pure, and are certain of our doctrine.

Can he who understands not God's word, understand God's works?

I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell.

But I believed in the power of sacrament, in very much the way I do today—not as a Catholic but as a human open to the truth that something can be made sacred by the attention we grant it.

We aren't going to choose paths of wisdom if we don't trust the One who has marked out those paths for us. Fear of the Lord is trust in the Lord

Happiness, or contentment, comes from where we look and what we believe, not from what we have.

God doesn't want our efforts at self-improvement. He wants our trust in his kindness toward us in Christ.

As a result, we don't see anything wrong with aiming more at personal gratification than at God's glory in the plans and choices we make, in some part because we believe that our earthly happiness is the primary way God's glory is revealed.