Church Quotes – Thoughtful Words on Church

"There are, after all, two ways of exercising power, so to speak. One is the old way, the one we all know: oppression.

We saw that under Stalinism and the like.

And then, here in the West, I’ve come to know another form that I hadn’t really thought about before.

That is seduction.

Seduction is something truly insidious. Because at least you can defend yourself against paternalism and tyranny.

Then you remain a subject.

It may crush you; it may kill you. You may have to spend your whole life under terrible conditions.

But you remain a subject. You can say: “I am, here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”

Someone who has been seduced stands there and has no idea where they are.

They protect their seducers.

“Oh, then we can’t take our next vacation on a cruise ship after all. And how are we supposed to manage now that gas keeps getting more expensive?”—that’s how the demands of the seduced person come across.

And someone like that will, of course, always contribute to maintaining the system of seduction.

And that’s why turning people into the seduced is a much surer way of securing power than oppressing them.

The Church, by the way, knew this all along."

Gerald Hüther

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."
Augustinus von Hippo

"The System is just like the Church. That’s probably why I feel so comfortable with it. It’s got a pope, the chairman; and a college of cardinals, the governors and bank presidents; and a curia, the senior staff. The equivalent of the laity is the commercial banks. If you’re a naughty parishioner in the Catholic Church, you come to confession. In this system, if you’re naughty, you come to the discount window for a loan. We even have different orders of religious thought like Jesuits and Franciscans and Dominicans only we call them pragmatists and monetarists and neo-Keynesians."

Richard Syron

"People give ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firma-ment, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but the sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth."

Martin Luther

"No political event or circumstance can be evaluated without the knowledge of The Vatican's part in it. And no significant world situation exists in which The Vatican does not play an important explicit or implicit role."

Avro Manhattan

"It is curious to note too, that most of the bodies (Secret societies) which work these (sacred rites), such as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Rite of Avignon, the Order of the Temple, Fesslors Rite, the Grand Council of the Emperors of the East and West, Sovereign Princes (of) Masons, etc, etc, are nearly all the 'offspring' of the Son's (Jesuits) of Ignatius Loyola. The Baron Hundt, Chevalier Ramsey, Tschoudy, Zinnendorf, and numerous others, who founded the 'grades' in these rites, worked under instructions from the General of the Jesuits."

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

"A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats."

Charles H. Spurgeon

"All princes and other persons of rank and name must be compelled by all means to listen to us and feel secure in doing so. By this approach, they all become our creatures, and no one will dare to offer the slightest resistance to our society... Ultimately, our society must ensure that every prince is either gracious to us or otherwise in our power, so that everyone who does not love us at least fears us."

Ignatius von Loyola

"And still, no one knows! And the truth remains hidden. Faith is the graveyard of many truths. And the mortician is the system of the self-appointed rulers of this earth. However, people often decorate it with the flowers of ignorance! Faith is the most dangerous instrument of the system since ancient Babylon.... and nobody notices it!"

Barry Jünemann

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

Friedrich Nietzsche

"It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a Golden Age: but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and that dragon is religion."

Bertrand Russell

"The blues are easy to play but not to feel. The background to our music is a spiritual-blues thing. Blues is a part of America. We're making our music into electric church music—a new kind of Bible, not like in a hotel, but a Bible you carry in your hearts, one that will give you a physical feeling. We try to make our music so loose and hard-hitting so that it hits your soul hard enough to make it open. It's like shock therapy or a can opener. Rock is technically blues-based...We want them to realize that our music is just as spiritual as going to church."

Jimi Hendrix

"When the mob governs, man is ruled by ignorance; when the church governs, he is ruled by superstition; and when the state governs, he is ruled by fear. Before men can live together in harmony and understanding, ignorance must be transmuted into wisdom, superstition into an illuminated faith, and fear into love."

Manly P. Hall

"The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when [Mormon] Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials."

Dennis Michael Quinn