Top 100 Doctrine That Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. Methodological individualism is the doctrine that psychological states are individuated with respect to their causal powers.
Jerry Fodor
#6. 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
#8. It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author's experience worked out literally.
Gore Vidal
#9. We should no more tolerate false doctrine that we would tolerate sin.
J.C. Ryle
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great
Muriel Spark
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. Pantheism, n.
The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
Mahatma Gandhi
#21. Nothing has yet been offered to invalidate the doctrine that the meaning of the Constitution may as well be ascertained by the Legislative as by the Judicial authority.
James Madison
#22. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#23. The most formidable people in the world, and now the most dangerous, people who ... lay down the doctrine that every frontier must be the starting out point for invasion.
Winston Churchill
#24. The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.
Bernard D'Espagnat
#25. I consider Monroe a pretty minor president. In spite of the Monroe Doctrine. That's the only important thing he ever did more or less on his own, when you really get down to it.
Harry S. Truman
#26. 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
#27. It is an undoubted truth that every doctrine that comes from God, leads to God; and that which doth not tend to promote holiness is not of God.
George Whitefield
#28. The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.
Galileo Galilei
#29. For any given doctrine that one wants to believe, there is never a shortage
of arguments by which to support it.
Leszek Kolakowski
#30. The whole is always more, is more capable of a much greater variety of wave states, than the combination of its parts ... In this very radical sense, quantum physics supports the doctrine that the whole is more than the combination of its parts.
Hermann Weyl
#31. The resurrection is not merely important to the historic Christian faith; without it, there would be no Christianity. It is the singular doctrine that elevates Christianity above all other world religions.
Adrian Rogers
#32. It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.
Gardner Murphy
#33. 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
#34. In his book, Samuelson grabs hold of Smith's wordplay and freebases meaning from it until a mere metaphor mutates into the economic doctrine that would define the shape and form of global finance for the remainder of the century, and beyond.
Anonymous
#35. Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#36. The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others.
Ayn Rand
#37. Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God's chosen.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
#38. During the canvass in the State of Mississippi, I traveled into different parts of that state, and this is the doctrine that I everywhere uttered: that while I was in favor of building up the colored race, I was not in favor of tearing down the white race.
Hiram Rhodes Revels
#39. What we lack is not an ideology or a doctrine that will save the world. What we lack is mindfulness of what we are, of what our situation really is.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#40. Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.
Harper Lee
#41. I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.
William Boyd
#42. Doctrines don't govern policy. They provide a conceptual framework by which policymakers approach their decisions. But there is no such thing as a doctrine that controls policy in every way.
Barton Gellman
#43. The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.
Steven Pinker
#44. If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose.
Peter Singer
#45. So it is not simply by understanding doctrine that we uproot narcissism and materialism. It is by actually taking our place in a local expression of that concrete economy of grace instituted by God in Christ and sustained by his Word and Spirit.
Michael S. Horton
#46. Second Timothy is clear that we have a distinct, demanding body of doctrine that needs to be taught, a message that requires reiteration every Sunday if we, as the Church, are to be who we are called to be.
Richard J. Foster
#47. It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#48. The doctrine that man is infinitely tough and resourceful and not easily cheated of his freedom to sin.
George C. Homans
#49. The terrible newly imported American doctrine that everyone ought to do something.
Osbert Sitwell
#50. Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children, even of aliens, born in a country, while the parents reside there under the protection of the government, and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth.
St. George Tucker
#51. As marriage and the family institution constitute the foundation and chief cornerstone of civil society, it is of the greatest moment that the marriage-tie should never be dissolved save for the most urgent reason. I cannot assent, however, to the doctrine that it should never be dissolved at all.
Joseph P. Bradley
#52. Any doctrine that weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.
John Dewey
#53. There are men who would be afraid to commit themselves on the doctrine that castor oil is a laxative.
Camille Flammarion
#54. I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one.
Grover Cleveland
#55. If I understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desire for honor among men made belief impossible.
A.W. Tozer
#56. It is a curious paradox of human history that a doctrine that tells human beings to regard themselves as sacrificial animals has been accepted as a doctrine representing benevolence and love for mankind.
Nathaniel Branden
#57. Let us not become so intense in our zeal to do good by winning arguments or by our pure intention in disputing doctrine that we go beyond good sense and manners, thereby promoting contention, or say and do imprudent things, invoke cynicism, or ridicule with flippancy.
James E. Faust
#58. I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries; that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their le.
Winston Churchill
#59. I hope the doctrine that Christians ought to be gloomy will soon be driven out of the universe. There are no people in the world who have such a right to be happy, nor have such cause to be joyful as the saints of the living God.
Charles Spurgeon
#60. Together with this outrage we may take the mutilation of the novel called The Search at the exact point where the author upholds, or appears for the moment to uphold, the doctrine that loyalty to the abstract truth must override all personal considerations;
Dorothy L. Sayers
#61. 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
#62. The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#63. 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
#64. The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
H.L. Mencken
#65. Wesley's anti-Calvinistic faction within the movement with its doctrine that grace could be lost. The
Max Weber
#66. As for the insane doctrine that being born in a country gives some right to the possession of the soil of that country, it hardly requires notice.
George Saintsbury
#67. Market Anarchism is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society.
Roderick T. Long
#68. 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
#69. I believe in the five solas. One hundred percent believe in the five solas. And I am - to those of you who know about this - I'm a monergist [someone that believes in the doctrine that says spiritual renewal is exclusively the activity of the Holy Spirit].
Rick Warren
#70. There is nothing absurd in the doctrine, that though man is justified by faith, he is himself not only not righteous, but the righteousness attributed to his works is beyond their own deserts.
John Calvin
#71. PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme ... not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
Ambrose Bierce
#72. Perish the infamous doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#73. probably the best-known tenet of modern moral philosophy: the doctrine that there is an unbridgeable gulf between facts and values, between descriptions of what is and prescriptions of what ought to be.
Peter Singer
#74. 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
#75. The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H.L. Mencken
#76. If one purges all subsequent additions from the original teachings of the Prophets and Christianity, especially those of the priests, one is left with a doctrine that is capable of curing all the social ills of humankind. Statement
Albert Einstein
#78. Normative Christian theology has enshrined a doctrine that obscures the truth in the scriptures. God is in a box and theologians scramble to preserve the box. It appears to be an attempt to rescue God from the shame of a creation-gone-bad.
Leo Hare
#79. Reagan sent money to the Contras to spend as they wish. National media remained unperturbed in accordance to the doctrine that the United States stands above any law of international agreement.
Noam Chomsky
#80. Zeno first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defence against a knave.
Plutarch
#81. What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?
H.L. Mencken
#82. I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.
John Shelton Reed
#83. Seditious libel is the doctrine that flourished in England during and after the Star Chamber. It is the hallmark of closed societies throughout the world. Under it, criticism of government is viewed as defamation and punished as a crime.
Harry Kalven
#84. I don't have any particular beef with Barbara Boxer. My beef is with the official Democratic doctrine that anybody who reaches Boxer's position has to spout and has to endorse.
Mickey Kaus
#85. No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please.
Charles Hodge
#86. According to the Buddha's doctrine that they believed in, it was not the caste that defined a person high or low. It was one's deeds that mattered.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
#87. Following Locke's doctrine that the mind is a tabula rasa, Helvetius considered the differences between individuals entirely due to differences of education: in every individual, his talents and his virtues are the effect of his instruction.
Bertrand Russell
#88. The only law we broke was the Brezhnev doctrine that once a country is in the Soviet bloc it cannot be overthrown.
Jack Kemp
#89. One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account ...
James Clerk Maxwell
#90. 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
#91. There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.
Ayn Rand
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. The doctrine of the Trinity simply states that God fully exists in three personally distinct ways.
Gregory A. Boyd
