Doctrine That Quotes

#1. When liberals equate criticizing Islamic doctrine with anti-Muslim bigotry, it leaves a vacuum that is too frequently filled by genuine right-wing anti-Muslim bigots who are even more disagreeable. Who gets stuck in the middle? Ex-Muslims.

Ali A. Rizvi

#2. The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbrinding, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.

Karl Marx

#3. I venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred cause.

William Cowper

#4. How much unbelief exists in the minds of the Latter-day Saints in regard to one particular doctrine which I revealed to them, and which God revealed to me - namely that Adam is our Father and God - ...

Brigham Young

#5. Right is not this or that doctrine or opinion; right is rational discussion about shared experience between honorable people leading to mutual understanding and tolerance.

Dee Hock

#6. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

James A. Michener

#7. A wise man had said that your Christian life is like a three-legged stool. The legs are doctrine, experience and practice, which is obedience; and you, will not stay upright unless all three are there. In recent years many Christians have not kept these three together.

J.I. Packer

#8. What is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing.

John Stuart Mill

#9. It is not in understanding a set of doctrines; not in outward comprehension of the "scheme of salvation," that rest and peace are to be found, but in taking up, in all lowliness and meekness, the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Frederick William Robertson

#10. 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

#11. The doctrine of the Trinity simply states that God fully exists in three personally distinct ways.

Gregory A. Boyd

#12. You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason.

Voltaire

#13. Be a lamp in brightness, and make the works of darkness cease, so that whenever your doctrine shines, no one may dare to heed the desires of darkness.

Ephrem The Syrian

#14. And if a man goes through fire for his doctrine - what does that prove? Verily, it is more if your own doctrine comes out of your own fire.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#15. Getting doctrine right is a matter of life and death, but holding that doctrine in the right spirit is essential too. A great deal of damage is done by those who hold the truth of Christ with the spirit of Satan.

J.D. Greear

#16. This doctrine of baptism for the dead is a great doctrine, one of the most glorious doctrines that was ever revealed to the human family; and there are light, power, glory, honor and immortality in it.

Brigham Young

#17. Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.

Harry Truman

#18. It is often thought that the Buddha's doctrine teaches us that suffering will disappear if one has meditated long enough, or if one sees everything differently. It is not that at all. Suffering isn't going to go away; the one who suffers is going to go away.

Ayya Khema

#19. If true religion is to beam upon us, our principle must be, that it is necessary to begin with heavenly teaching, and that it is impossible for any man to obtain even the minutest portion of right and sound doctrine without being a disciple of Scripture.

John Calvin

#20. Teaching our children is more than just imparting information. It's helping our children get the doctrine into their hearts in a way that it becomes part of their very being and is reflected in their attitudes and behavior throughout their lives.

Cheryl A. Esplin

#21. 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.

Martin Luther

#22. By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.

George Orwell

#23. I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.

William Wilberforce

#24. There is no better rule to try a doctrine by than the question, Is it merciful, or is it unmerciful? If its character is that of mercy, it has the image of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Hosea Ballou

#25. 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 Macaulay

#26. Methodological individualism is the doctrine that psychological states are individuated with respect to their causal powers.

Jerry Fodor

#27. I don't subscribe to any particular doctrine or ideology. I just think that there's kind of a good and bad, the good being life in its purest, happiest form, and the other being the darker side of existence.

Michael J. Fox

#28. Both nations have an idea of Manifest Destiny and a concept of the Monroe Doctrine in their ideological arsenal, and both are continental powers with political and cultural influence that extends far beyond their national borders.

Patrick Mendis

#29. The tragedy of Wilsonianism is that it bequeathed to the twentieth century's decisive power an elevated foreign policy doctrine unmoored from a sense of history or geopolitics.

Henry Kissinger

#30. The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.

Lincoln Steffens

#31. At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly

Primo Levi

#32. The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#33. We are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that 'there is but one political god, George Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet

Robert Mugabe

#34. Besides, it seems to mee that spreading the doctrine of doing good can harm no one.' Nakor shook his head. 'Would that it were true. Men have been put to death for preaching good.

Raymond E. Feist

#35. Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.

John Milton

#36. Only for you, children of doctrine and learning, have we written this work. Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and gathered again; what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in another, that it may be understood by your wisdom.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

#37. I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.

James Madison

#38. Say what men may, it is doctrine that moves the world. He who takes no position will not sway the human intellect.

William Greenough Thayer Shedd

#39. It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author's experience worked out literally.

Gore Vidal

#40. Our faith in doctrine is not established until we have a perfect conviction that God is its author.

John Calvin

#41. I believe in living for this world - that's my doctrine - to make everybody happy that you can.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#42. The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph.

C.S. Lewis

#43. We should no more tolerate false doctrine that we would tolerate sin.

J.C. Ryle

#44. In our greatest universities, naturalism - the doctrine that nature is all there is - is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds.

Philip Johnson

#45. Ignorance of Scripture is the root of every error in religion, and the source of ever heresy. To be allowed to remove a few grains of ignorance, and to throw a few rays of light on God's precious word, is, in my opinion, the greatest honor that can be put on a Christian.

J.C. Ryle

#46. Think on this doctrine,-that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.

Marcus Aurelius

#47. We sometimes look among our numbers to find one to whom we can point who agrees with us, so we can have company to justify our apostasy. We rationalize by saying that someday the Church doctrine will catch up with our way of thinking. Truth is not established by Gallup polls.

Ezra Taft Benson

#48. New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.

Madame De Stael

#49. The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation ... surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

#50. That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.

Florence Nightingale

#51. The Word of truth teaches in the clearest and most positive terms that all of the dead will be raised. No doctrine of the faith rests upon a more literal and emphatic body of Scripture authority than this, nor is any more vital to Christianity.

C.I. Scofield

#52. I know no way of discounting the doctrine that when you take something you want, and damn the consequences, then you had better be ready to accept whatever consequences ensue.

Wallace Stegner

#53. ZEN is MEDITATION. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation. As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which a State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.

Kerry Thornley

#54. The introduction of the doctrine of polygamy was the first time in my life that I desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation.

Brigham Young

#55. Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great

Muriel Spark

#56. The doctrine that everything is fine as long as the population is quiet, that applies in the Middle East, applies in Central America, it applies in the United States.

Noam Chomsky

#57. What we need to be assured of is not that we possess an excellent system of doctrine and ritual, but that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a reality.

Roland Allen

#58. It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.

Henrik Ibsen

#59. Once sure that the doctrine we teach is God's Word, once certain of this, we may build thereupon, and know that this cause shall and must remain; the devil shall not be able to overthrow it, much less the world be able to uproot it, how fiercely soever it rage.

Martin Luther

#60. Let the pulpit resound with the doctrine and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear of the dignity of man's nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God ... Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes and parliaments.

John Adams

#61. Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the divine influences in our own hearts, is the cardinal doctrine of Quakerism.

Caroline Emelia Stephen

#62. Confirming an intuitive sense I've always felt for the interconnectedness of all things, this doctrine has provided me ways to understand the intricate web of co-arising that links one being with all other beings, and to apprehend the reciprocities between thought and action, self and universe.

Joanna Macy

#63. The conviction that Christian doctrine matters for Christian living is one of the most important growth points of the Christian life.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

#64. 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

#65. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#66. This doctrine of polygamy, or spiritual wife-system, that has been taught and practiced among us, will prove our destruction and overthrow.

Joseph Smith Jr.

#67. When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death.

Albert Mohler

#68. Why is it that we have a tendency to lazily assume other Christians have been the kind of dedicated, motivated, responsible, knowledgeable experts on Bible doctrines that we have never cared enough to become?

Len Smith

#69. I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.

Sheri S. Tepper

#70. The acid test is that all paranoids and fundamentalists lack a sense of humor, for humor is a chaos flux and flexibility, of ambiguity and multi-dimensionality, and that kind of erotic liveliness is precisely what the fundamentalist is trying to eliminate in holding rigidly to doctrine.

William Irwin Thompson

#71. Early laurels weigh like lead and of many of the boys whom I knew at Eton, I can say that their lives are over ... Once again romanticism with its death wish is to blame, for it lays an emphasis on childhood, on a fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doctrine of future redemption.

Cyril Connolly

#72. The Christian motto 'All men are brothers', however, also means that those who do not accept brotherhood are not men.

Slavoj Zizek

#73. 'The Sea Wolf' is the story of a man who believes only in brute force. He is so firm in belief in his own ideas that he despises all who disagree with him. He preaches the doctrine of intolerance. He flaunts the notion that democracy is anything but weakness.

Ida Lupino

#74. It is a doctrine of satan that men are no longer terrified by the law and have replaced it with a gospel of love and grace ONLY!

Martin Luther

#75. 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

#76. Religion is simply a tool to put God's love into words and symbols. Doctrine is only useful to the extent it enhances your understanding of that love. God doesn't care about your religion. He cares about your heart.

Reba Riley

#77. He that denies any of the doctrines that Christ has delivered, to be true, denies him to be sent from God, and consequently to be the Messiah; and so ceases to be a Christian.

John Locke

#78. In the words of then - vice president Richard Nixon, the increasing crime rate "can be traced directly to the spread of the corrosive doctrine that every citizen possesses an inherent right to decide for himself which laws to obey and when to disobey them."37

Michelle Alexander

#79. Anyone and anything can be a vehicle for the expression of God - but never contain the fullness of God. Therefore, the church recognizes that God will simultaneously employ and shatter.. all doctrines, all ideologies.. even within the church itself.

Thomas G. Bandy

#80. Pantheism, n.
The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

Ambrose Bierce

#81. My brothers and my sisters, do always persevere in true and earnest prayer, and the Lord will hear you. Believe that the highest revelations of science are conformable to the doctrine of the efficacy of prayer; that in this doctrine the highest philosophy harmonizes with the purest devotion.

Keshub Chandra Sen

#82. There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.

Walter Kaufmann

#83. The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God.

Andrew Dickson White

#84. While the pulpit must hold to its unswerving loyalty to the Word of God, it must, at the same time, be loyal to the doctrine of prayer which that same Word illustrates and enforces upon mankind.

Edward McKendree Bounds

#85. Thus the sum and substance of all doctrine is this, that we are not justified by any works, but that faith in Christ saves.

Martin Luther

#86. Judging from the tendency and effect of his arguments, an atheist does not appear positively to refuse that a God may be ... His verdict on the doctrine of God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an atheist. He is not an anti-theist.

Thomas Chalmers

#87. It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.

Alistair Cooke

#88. I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

Henry Adams

#89. None of you need worry because you read something that was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine ... I think I understand them thoroughly.

Gordon B. Hinckley

#90. The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.

John Rawls

#91. We do not hold that doctrine gives rise to awakening but rather that the individual awakenings come first.

Haruki Murakami

#92. If there is one great power, and the great power has taken upon itself the right to preempt and is choosing for itself when and in what circumstances it's going to do that, obviously it leads people in the rest of the world to wonder how far this doctrine extends.

John Lewis Gaddis

#93. There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who 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.

Henry Fielding

#94. I am sure that if every leader who goes into battle will promise himself that he will come out either a conqueror or a corpse, he is sure to win. There is no doubt of that. Defeat is not due to losses but to the destruction of the Soul of the leaders-the 'live to fight another day' doctrine.

George S. Patton

#95. As liberals, men like Richter viewed socialism as the great modern counter-revolution, and believed that the achievement of the socialist goal would lead both to appalling poverty and state absolutism. There was nothing in the socialist doctrine of the time that would suggest otherwise.

Ralph Raico

#96. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?

John Quincy Adams

#97. Yes, I am calling for an intellectual revolution that sweeps away the corruption, absurdity and error, which prevail in morals, customs, traditions, and doctrines.

Ameen Rihani

#98. If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls and shall submit to the monstrous doctrine that follows from it, let him be anathema [excommunicated]

Justinian I

#99. Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were only made for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered or enslaved.

John Muir

#100. [T]he moralists of Europe [have] pretended that beasts have no rights ... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous ... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror ...

Arthur Schopenhauer