Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
—Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022) Soviet Head of State
Each eye can have its vision separately; but when we are looking at anything, our vision, which in itself is divided, joins up and unites in order to give itself as a whole to the object that is put before it.
—John Calvin (1509–64) French Theologian, Reformer
Christianity is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men.—It teaches that to love the All-perfect is happiness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Christianity is more than history. It is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests or expresses a truth, which man needs assent to or to put into practice.
—Noah Porter (1811–92) American Clergyman, Academic
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts—the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these others, men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after men.
—Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) English Educationalist
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
True Christianity is love in action.
—David O. McKay (1873–1970) American Religious Leader, Educator
None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.
—Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) American Abolitionist, Writer
The task and triumph of religion is to make men and nations true and just and upright in all their dealings, and to bring all law as well as all conduct into subjection and conformity to the law of God.
—Henry van Dyke Jr. (1852–1933) American Author, Educator, Clergyman
Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other – beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty—necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
The Gateway to Christianity is not through an intricate labyrinth of dogma, but by a simple belief in the person of Christ.
—William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American Literary Scholar, Academic
The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
The desire to rule is the mother of all heresies.
—John Chrysostom (c.347–407 CE) Archbishop of Constantinople
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Whatever men may think of religion, the historic fact is, that in proportion as the institutions of Christianity lose their hold upon the multitudes, the fabric of society is in peril.
—Arthur Tappan Pierson (1837–1911) American Presbyterian Clergy
Through its whole history the Christian religion has developed supreme affinities for best things. For the noblest culture, for purest morals, for magnificent literatures, for most finished civilizations, for most energetic national temperaments, for most enterprising races, for the most virile and progressive stock of mind, it has manifested irresistible sympathies. Judging its future by its past, no other system of human thought has so splendid a destiny. It is the only system which possesses undying youth.
—Austin Phelps (1820–90) American Clergyman, Author, Professor
The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him.
—Harold Kushner (1935–2023) American Rabbi, Author
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
Christianity is intensely practical—She has no trait more striking than her common sense.
—Thomas Buxton, 1st Baronet (1786–1845) British Philanthropist, Abolitionist
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the oceans dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
—Frederick Martin Lehman
If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this: that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902) British Victorian Novelist, Essayist, Critic
Christianity is art and not money. Money is its curse.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Christianity works while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost, while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord’s Prayer.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.
—Billy Graham (1918–91) American Baptist Religious Leader
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