Quotes About Priests

Catholics who dominated both industry and labor on the waterfront counted on priests' minding their own business when it came to the conduct of their livelihoods.

Death and destruction are necessary to the health of the world, and therefore as natural, and lovable, as birth and life. Only priests and born cowards moan and weep over dying. Brave men face it with approving nonchalance.

There are in Timbuktu numerous judges, doctors [of letters] and priests [i.e., learned Muslims]. [The ruler] greatly honors scholarship. Here too they sell many handwritten books that arrive from Barbary [i.e., North Africa]. More profit is had from their sale than from any other merchandise. –Leo Africanus (1550)

The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.

The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. —THOMAS JEFFERSON

The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. THOMAS JEFFERSON

I am persuaded that the phrase 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

Iain's gaze went back and forth between Gillian and Brodick. Father Laggan's back, he remarked. And there's another, younger priest named Stevens with him. Why are you telling me this? Brodick asked. I just wanted you to know there are two priests available, Iain explained with a meaningful glance at Gillian.

Sound had always been sacred to the Aryans—it was far more important to them than the meaning of these hymns—so when they intoned and memorised them, the priests felt possessed by a sacred presence. The idea that the sound of a sacred text could be more important than the truths it conveys immediately challenges our modern notion of "scripture," which, of course, implies a written text.

Martin] Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

The man who has no mind of his own lends it to the priests.

Father and Mother are apostles, bishops and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel.

If we were rational enough to judge what we are fed based on what we are fed, those in the business of selling us hope (i.e., public speakers, presidents, priests, etc.) wouldn't wear suits.

Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.

Youth means love, Vows can't change nature, priests are only men.

If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

Terrible times in which priests no longer merit the praise of poets and in which poets have not yet begun to be priests.

A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.

At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests.

The warrior priests worship insects as sacred beings, and believe that the ingestion of insects ennobles man and keeps him from descending into bestiality.

Snark is what people on the inside call any attempt at protest from people on the outside. I hate it on principle, as do all Columbia professors, Catholic priests, and Mississippi Klansmen.