Top 100 Quotes About Clergy
#1. Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.
Charles Kingsley
#2. He believed there were too many black clergy who were selling heaven to the people.2
Clarence Taylor
#3. Up to 700 A.D., it was assumed that the Christian family cared for their own dead. The clergy played little role in burial and none whatsoever in the arrangement and decoration of tombs.
Peter R.L. Brown
#4. For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven
George Orwell
#5. People take sides on political things, such as the Vietnam War. War is immoral and war is wrong, but I don't think the clergy ought to bring it before the Church.
Warren Giles
#6. By dividing the people of God as clergy and laymen, we have made the latter a majority of lame men.
Richard P. Stanley
#7. For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state.
Meir Soloveichik
#8. If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.
Marquis De Lafayette
#9. The bourgeoisie, when it was struggling against the nobility sustained by the clergy, hoisted the flag of free thought and atheism; but once triumphant, it changed its tone and manner and today it uses religion to support its economic and political supremacy
Paul Lafargue
#10. While politicians, clergy, creators of advertisements, and other worthies assert stoutly that the family is the foundation of society, the nuclear family, as an institution, is currently in grave trouble.
Jane Jacobs
#11. The clergy are at present divided into three sections: an immense body who are ignorant; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowledge.
Thomas Huxley
#12. And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.
Michael Emerson
#13. The Clergy is the greatest hindrance to faith.
Martin Luther
#14. Among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#15. I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift
#16. Our Father GOD is the measure by which we know the shortcomings of earthly dads and earthly clergy; for their vocation is to be His image on earth. GOD allows them to fail so that we might seek perfect fatherhood in Him.
Scott Hahn
#17. Your role during the prayer of consecration is crucial, helping the mass appear reverent and planned. Match the presider as he crosses himself and when he bows. Learn the liturgical style of your clergy so you will follow each one seamlessly; their practices vary.
Beth Wickenberg Ely
#18. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl Sagan
#19. The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly.
Thomas Jefferson
#20. If you need help, look to clergy who do not spout their own beliefs but direct you in sincerity by using the Bible.
Monica Johnson
#21. I was the biggest George Harrison fanatic in the world. He was raised Catholic; my parents are both ex-clergy, so I was raised Catholic, and I admired how he used his faith.
John Fugelsang
#22. Perhaps you could not find such godless, such ruthless and such materialist people as clergy.
Irving Stone
#23. The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves ... these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
Thomas Jefferson
#24. The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.
Harriet Martineau
#25. I have a work presently in the Press named 'Six Months in Hell' which you may one day read. I consider it will be worth perusing, bruising badly the morals of Britain and America, while Royalty, clergy, critics, society and bloodhounds of law must all incur its censure.
Amanda McKittrick Ros
#26. In 1788 Dr. Rush had told the clergy that, whatever their doctrinal differences, "you are all united in inculcating the necessity of morals," and "from the success or failure of your exertions in the cause of virtue, we anticipate the freedom or slavery of our country.
Gordon S. Wood
#27. The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.
C.S. Lewis
#28. Because it can be very difficult to go talk to a member of the clergy, people must be able to count on the promise that what they say will not be repeated. Therefore, like therapists, ministers practice confidentiality in order to establish trust with those in their care.
Matthew Floding
#29. The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#30. Have we arrived at our own faith and our own path or simply internalized the beliefs of parents, clergy, spouse, or friends?
Joan Z. Borysenko
#31. Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.
H.L. Mencken
#32. Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, living the life of ordinary men, sharing their difficulties and understanding their trials by close personal experience.
Roland Allen
#33. From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.
Nikola Tesla
#34. We need some clergy with some backbone, who don't mind making uncomfortable at times those who are very comfortable, and challenging them at the core of their faith, at least causing them to pause and to have dialogue and to be open for further discussion.
Tim McDonald
#35. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.
James Madison
#36. So too, in forming a constitution, or in enacting rules of procedure, or making canons, the people do not merely passively assent, but actively cooperate. They have, in all these matters, the same authority as the clergy.
Charles Hodge
#37. We need a country literally full of cat guys and cat girls, bikers, politicians, clergy, and everyone in between, in order to keep millions from dying without homes.
Jackson Galaxy
#38. Parents, teachers, clergy and physicians change lives with their words. It is hypnotic for a child or patient to hear an authority figure's words. As I am always sharing, 'wordswordswords' can become 'swordswordswords,' and we can kill or cure with either words or swords.
Bernie Siegel
#39. Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.
Rudolph Rummel
#40. The clergy would have us believe them against our own reason, as the woman would have her husband against his own eyes.
John Selden
#41. So long as you believe that man is essentially evil in nature, and a more vicious doctrine was never promulgated, it follows that he is often going to need to have his ears slapped back, and who should do this but the clergy?
Anne Roe
#42. The clergy, no less than the capitalist class, lives on the backs of the people, profits from the degradation, the ignorance and the oppression of the people.
Rosa Luxemburg
#43. His friend laughed. 'You missed your calling, Freddie,' he said. 'You should have been one of the aforementioned clergy. Is this what marriage does to you? One shudders at the very idea.
Mary Balogh
#44. Worshipped was that of Mammon. It is difficult to estimate the size of monastic occupation. At the time it was believed that the clergy owned one third of the land, but it may be safe to presume that the monks controlled one sixth of English territory.
Peter Ackroyd
#45. Pray we for the Clergy; that they may rightly divide, that they may rightly walk; that while they teach others, themselves may learn.
Lancelot Andrewes
#46. There is a long and well-documented tradition of wisdom in the Christian faith that any venture into leadership, whether by laity or clergy, is hazardous. it is necessary that there be leaders, but woe to those who become leaders.
Eugene H. Peterson
#47. I think the issue of clergy sexual abuse sparked people to look at their faith in a different way.
William P. Leahy
#48. Give the clergy your sympathy; don't give them anything else.
Benjamin Jowett
#49. The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
Barbara Tuchman
#50. The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a "supportive institution" and our clergy as members of a "helping profession". The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.
Stanley Hauerwas
#51. Some have suffered death to make it possible for us to have the scriptures today. Historically, the scriptures in the Bible were reserved for the clergy, with the reading of them by others being denounced. At times, laws even prohibited the public or private reading of them.
L. Lionel Kendrick
#52. You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.
William P. Leahy
#53. What do our clergy lose by reading their sermons? They lose preaching, the preaching of the voice in many cases, the preaching of the eye almost always.
Augustus William Hare
#54. Benefit of clergy: Half-rate on the railroad.
Mark Twain
#55. But I thought I might have to go to church on Sunday, and although the Archbishop has said one needn't, I still think that the more old-fashioned clergy expect one to wear a hat. But
Agatha Christie
#56. Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favor.
Emily Murphy
#57. When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.
Bertrand Russell
#58. One of the duties of fortitude is to keep the weak from receiving injury; another, to check the wrong motions of our own souls; a third, both to disregard humiliations, and to do what is right with an even mind. All these clearly ought to be fulfilled by all Christians, and especially by the clergy.
Saint Ambrose
#59. I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.
Fred Hoyle
#60. The most grievous wrong of that day ... was to be found in the establishment of the celibacy of the clergy ... This hideous doctrine of a celibate priesthood was maintained only by a constant struggle against the better and truer instincts of the heart.
Lillie Devereux Blake
#61. Without fear of contradiction, I can safely say that every step in progress that woman has made she has been assailed by ecclesiastics, that her most vigilant unwearied opponents have always been the clergy ...
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#62. I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church-an equality in the teacher of Religion, and a dependence on the people, are republican sentiments-but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government
Rufus King
#64. slept on the priest's floor last night. We got very drunk." "You and the padre got smashed? What was the occasion?" "Clergy Appreciation Day." "That's a thing?" "Apparently so. Got drunk with a priest last night. Broke a televangelist's wrist this morning. My new favorite holiday.
Tiffany Reisz
#65. Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
#66. You see in the streets of London, great and little boys running about in long blue coats, which, like robes, reach quite down to the feet, and little white bands, such as the clergy wear.
Karl Philipp Moritz
#67. The law for religious freedom ... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was the
business only of the clergy to care for souls.
George MacDonald
#69. The clergy were to pray for all men, the knight to fight for them, and the commoner to work that all might eat.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#70. Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.
Douglas Brinkley
#71. It was in this year, 1828, that the standard of "the Christian Party in Politics" was openly unfurled ... This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind - until this hour lamentably neglected in the United States - to effect a union of Church and State.
Frances Wright
#72. It is a very rare church indeed that encourages its members to think for themselves in religious matters, or even tolerates this, and in most of them the clergy are quite ready to lay down the law in other fields too.
Anne Roe
#73. That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.
James Madison
#75. I'm a man of some intelligence. I've had some education, passed the bar, practiced law. I've been a teacher and I deal with men of substance, statesman, business leaders, the clergy ... So why do I spend my time arguing with Dizzy Dean?
Branch Rickey
#76. It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not, what they ought to be, so are the nation.
Jane Austen
#77. Clergy had a vested interest in retaining the old, ways, which made few demands of them as teachers, as spiritual guides, or as moral examples or agents.
Alister E. McGrath
#78. I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy.
Albert Einstein
#79. That's my theory: immediate electrocution of all ignorant and dirty people. I'm all for the criminals - give color to life. Trouble is if you started to punish ignorance you'd have to begin in the first families, then you could take up the moving-picture people, and finally Congress and the clergy.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#80. You know, Eric, I could have sworn I heard a goat bleating while I was working in the slype yesterday evening.
I expect the Dean had separated it from the sheep, Eric said solemnly. Isn't that what clergy are for?
Catherine Aird
#81. In front of an audience of Protestant clergy, the Catholic JFK was drawing strength from his vulnerability.
David Pietrusza
#82. I seriously wish that he had spent his entire childhood being serially arse-raped by teachers, scoutmasters, members of the clergy, relatives, policemen, doctors, door-to-door salesmen and all registered sex offenders within a 500-mile radius of his unprotected bedroom.
Douglas Coupland
#83. Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
Baron D'Holbach
#84. The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.
John Hurt
#85. You must believe in God, in spite of what the clergy say.
Benjamin Jowett
#86. Whenever the clergy succeeded in conquering political power in any country, the result has been disastrous to the interests of religion and inimical to the progress of humanity.
James Connolly
#87. The clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.
["Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," The Westminster Review, 1885.]
George Eliot
#88. Religion claims we must obey the mandates of God and clergy can tell us what they are. Science claims we must obey the laws of nature and scientists can tell us what they are. Both claims are absurdly pretentious.
Dee Hock
#89. Whole fields have disappeared from view: the clergy, the military, electoral politics, teaching, even academia itself, for the most part, including basic science.
William Deresiewicz
#90. The Orthodox hierarchy doesn't have the kind of power that high-ranking clergy do in other churches. There isn't even a worldwide governing board to hold all the various Orthodox bodies together.
Frederica Mathewes-Green
#91. The Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.
George Eliot
#92. The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. By the former of these (canon law), the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order.
John Adams
#94. That level of expectation that I'm going to be conservative is really disappointing, but it is how many people think about clergy and the church
Alan Green
#95. Those who are used to a clergy take very lightly those who do not have a formal divinity degree: like Paul and Peter and James and John.
Dallin H. Oaks
#96. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
James Madison
#97. You mean 'Injustice Sunday II', ... is using religion to alienate people rather than to bring people together. It has more to do with politics than with theology. I'm disappointed that clergy would be leading such a divisive call.
Tim McDonald
#98. The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.
Franz Grillparzer
#99. World travel and getting to know clergy of all denominations has helped mold me into an ecumenical being. We're separated by theology and, in some instances, culture and race, but all that means nothing to me any more.
Billy Graham
#100. [Whenever the average intellect of the clergy declines in the balance with the average intellect of the people] the churches will be shut up and a new order of things [will] begin.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
