Top 100 Quotes About Idolatry
#1. If anyone does not refrain from the love of money, he will be defiled by idolatry and so be judged as if he were one of the heathen.
Polycarp
#2. Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations
Os Guinness
#3. Idolatry is really not good for anyone. Not even the idols.
John Bach
#4. How shall I speak thee, or thy power address Thou God of our idolatry, the Press ... Like Eden's dead probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
William Cowper
#5. Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#6. We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry.
John Piper
#7. Jesus came into this world and died on the cross to blow apart all the deceptive mental pictures of God that we've been enslaved to since the original fall and that lie at the root of all idolatry and sin,
Gregory A. Boyd
#8. Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.
Rabindranath Tagore
#9. Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.
Northrop Frye
#10. The whole youth-idolatry oh-god-not-another-birthday thing has to be the most sure-fire way to be unhappy about the way things are progressing in your life.
Nat Friedman
#11. Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The
A.W. Tozer
#12. Music is one way of saying things that you cannot really say to a person face to face, a sign of suppressed anger, unhealthy, deadly and gigantic idolatry.
The Eldest
#13. Our English people are much addicted to raising idols, and then revenging themselves on their own idolatry by knocking down and demolishing the poor bits of wood and stone that they had worshipped as gods. How many literary reputations have been so treated!
Mary Russell Mitford
#14. Too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry, but intense love for the Guru makes rapid growth possible.
Swami Vivekananda
#15. Idolatry is not holding on to the wrong things; it is holding on to the good things wrongly, including God," Herbert McCabe, O.P., quoted in Christian Century, August 21, 2013, 21. Any
Rev. Joseph A. Heim
#16. The only way to revive Temple worship is through repentance. The men of Judah must give up their idolatry and turn their hearts back to God.
Lynn Austin
#17. Not only the adoration of images is idolatry, but also trust in one's own righteousness, works and merits, and putting confidence in riches and power. As the latter is the commonest, so it also is the most noxious.
Martin Luther
#18. Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.
Pope Francis
#19. Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function.
Julian Jaynes
#20. In America we have an idolatry called the "adulation of youth." Apparently distressed by their inability to communicate with the younger generation, many adults simply imitate it.
Billy Graham
#21. The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry , the only ersatz of God , the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.
Simone Weil
#22. Luther argues that when we fail to believe that God accepts us fully in Christ, and look to some other way to justify or prove ourselves, we commit idolatry.
Timothy Keller
#23. To worship ourselves rather than Christ is idolatry; but to dismiss anything of ourselves, including our bodies, as of trivial importance is a form of blasphemy.
Francis George
#24. From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion.
Swami Vivekananda
#25. I long for a church that understands the dangers of entertainment and sees it for what is is: a lion crouching at the evangelical door, ready to devour us. We need a culture of evangelism that never sacrifices to the idolatry of entertainment, but serves up the rich fare found the gospel of Christ.
J. Mack Stiles
#26. His (Lincoln's) patriotism was saved from idolatry by the overwhelming sense of the sovereignty of God.
Elton Trueblood
#28. If gratitude is not rooted in the beauty of God before the gift, it is probably disguised idolatry. May God grant us a heart to delight in him for who he is so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver!
John Piper
#29. One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.
Simone Weil
#32. Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry - to them I say "Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?"
Swami Vivekananda
#33. Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
Swami Vivekananda
#34. [A Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage speaks to a museum curator.]
And I come here alone. For five
seven
eighteen
forty years it was in my mind that the old Law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry ... '
So it comes with all faiths.
Rudyard Kipling
#35. the simplest definition of the Abrahamic faith. It is not our task to conquer or convert the world or enforce uniformity of belief. It is our task to be a blessing to the world. The use of religion for political ends is not righteousness but idolatry.
Jonathan Sacks
#36. Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#40. Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#41. If you want to follow Jesus because He'll fix your marriage, if you want to follow Jesus because He'll give you a better life, that's idolatry. Follow Christ for the sake of Christ; He is worthy!
Paul Washer
#42. The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.
George Bernard Shaw
#43. Being a good steward of those material things that God has given our churches is good. Becoming obsessed with any one item to the neglect of His mission is idolatry.
Thom S. Rainer
#44. The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all, regardless of how worthy the idolatry that he or she has substituted for it.
Richard J. Foster
#45. We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol.
John Ortberg
#46. Ordinary love is mere animal attraction. Otherwise why is the distinction between the sexes? If one kneels before an image, it is dreadful idolatry; but if one kneels before husband or wife, it is quite permissible!
Swami Vivekananda
#47. Rather than continuing on the normal sexual path toward pain, emptiness, and idolatry, you can allow God to heal you, change the way you think, and place deliberate safeguards in your life to protect you.
Craig Groeschel
#48. I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry.
Robert Charles Wilson
#49. When your thoughts and opinions become intellectual gods in rebellion against the Word of God, you are in idolatry.
John Hagee
#50. The heart of all idolatry in the Bible is the de-godding of God.
D. A. Carson
#51. God withdrew from the temple in Ezekiel's day because He would not and could not dwell together with idolatry, immorality, and violence. The principle will never change - the Lamb will not be married to someone who remains wedded to his sins, in spite of what some modern teachers claim.
Michael L. Brown
#52. I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors.
Meryl Streep
#53. Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God.
Mahatma Gandhi
#54. Contrary to secularist myth, science in practice is innately and irrepressibly religious: it serves either God or idolatry. But one of the features of idolatry is deceit. In this case, idolatry conceals from itself that it is idolatry.
Vern Sheridan Poythress
#55. It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.
Virginia Woolf
#56. Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what they represent, and in this respect mental images and lofty abstractions can be more insidious than bronze idols
Alan W. Watts
#57. The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images. Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry.
Robert Dale Owen
#58. Idolatry is when you become the source of your own joy. Poverty of spirit is a wonderful thing.
Paul David Washer
#59. To walk into the Jefferson memorial is to be in a temple of the pure idolatry of reason
Scot McKnight
#60. Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.
Lionel Blue
#61. Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.
John Selden
#62. Idolatry, especially that of the body, is for Athanasius a kind of barometer, measuring the perversity into which humans have fallen, the degree to which their knowledge of God has been lost, and the extent to which the image of God in them obscured, the consequence of which is corruption and death.
Athanasius Of Alexandria
#63. All of the modern counseling vernacular is really not dealing with the root issue of idolatry. Someone or something's preeminent rather than God.
Mark Driscoll
#64. We have come to worship things, status, fame, popularity, money, security. Anything that comes between God and ourselves is idolatry. Jesus demands Lordship over all such things.
Billy Graham
#65. An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold on to it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave.
Timothy Keller
#66. God is jealous for your heart, not because he is petty or insecure, but because he loves you. The reason why God has such a huge problem with idolatry is that his love for you is all-consuming. He loves you too much to share you.
Kyle Idleman
#67. Like the people of Israel who created a golden calf to represent God while Moses was away, fundamentalist Christians have built their own idols to represent God until Jesus returns. The religion of fundamentalism is idolatry.
Mel White
#68. Idolatry is permissible in Hinduism when it sub serves an ideal.
Mahatma Gandhi
#69. A man cannot love himself; he can only idolize it, and over the idol delightfully tyrannize - without purpose. The great gift which the simple idolatry of self gives is lack of further purpose
Charles Williams
#70. Our fathers of faith have done a great job delivering our nations from the clutches of idolatry and witchcraft through signs and wonders
Sunday Adelaja
#71. The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the 'chosen people'.
Simone Weil
#72. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.
William Wordsworth
#73. Oh shame on you, who call yourself a Christian! Do you not see that it is the grossest idolatry to speak of the market as though it were the rival of God?
Amitav Ghosh
#74. Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.
Yuval Noah Harari
#75. What we need to affirm is that Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Whenever we marry Jesus to a political party, we are committing the sin of idolatry. We are making Jesus into the image of our political party.
Tony Campolo
#76. If the human race would turn from its evil ways and return to God, putting behind its sins of disobedience, idolatry, pride, greed, and belligerence, and all the various aberrations that lead to war, the possibility of peace exists.
Billy Graham
#79. Idolatry is worshipping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshipped.
Saint Augustine
#80. Today we have different idols. . . We have trusted in human reason, science, and technology to solve our problems and progress toward a better world and a prosperous life. Yet idolatry brings death.
Craig G. Bartholomew
#81. I tried to close my ears to the strange worshipful chanting and fix my mind on God, but the Egyptians' idolatry weighed down my weary shoulders and brought tears to my closed eyes.
Kristen Reed
#82. Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#83. We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any thing about ice-cream at home, but we look upon it with a sort of idolatry now that it is so scarce in these red-hot climates of the East.
Mark Twain
#84. Supporters of the [environmental] movement often appear to worship not the God of heaven, but the god of nature. This is a dangerous form of idolatry. Anytime animal life becomes more sacred in our view than human life, we have lost sight of our proper priorities.
Billy Graham
#85. One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots.
Swami Vivekananda
#86. To be free in Christ, our high places will have to fall. We must be willing to take a stand against idolatry.
Beth Moore
#87. Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what want, the answer to every longing
the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Frederick William Robertson
#88. Idolatry involves putting the things we love in the place of God or seeing God as a means of getting the things that we want, and that's the second great struggle of our lives.
Colin S. Smith
#89. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
Thomas Paine
#90. Why do the Ten Commandments begin with a prohibition of idolatry? It is, Luther argued, because we never break the other commandments without breaking the first.
Timothy Keller
#91. At nineteen, one lives in the utter idolatry, therefore the extreme superstition, of sex. Monstrously exaggerated tales about sexual feats, which we listen to greedily, determine our expectations. The disappointments are correspondingly great.
Gregor Von Rezzori
#92. If we esteem them too highly, good works can become the greatest idolatry.
Martin Luther
#93. Those who lapse from the Gospel to the Law are no better off than those who lapse from grace into idolatry.
Martin Luther
#94. The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.
Peter Kreeft
#95. If religion might be judged of according to men's intentions, there would scarcely be any idolatry in the world.
Joseph Hall
#96. Mine, mine. Fear, idolatry, hoarding. The delight and terror of the fetishist.
Donna Tartt
#97. Put to death therefore what is earthly to you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.
Jewel E. Ann
#98. Human beings are empowered to exercise dominion over nature and even to be participants in creation; and yet, at the same time, there are strictures against idolatry, which is a kind of overreaching and confusing human beings' role with God's.
Michael Sandel
#99. God intends to free us from more than our idolatry; He intends to free us from ourselves. He even wants to liberate us from our need to find a silver lining in suffering.
Tullian Tchividjian
#100. But with art came idolatry; with construction came ostentation and oppression; with commerce came luxury.
James Oscar Boyd
