“The legislator of the Jews in a bolder spirit went to a further extreme and in the practice of his “naked” philosophy, as they call it, ventured to speak of him who was possessed by love of the divine.”

“He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

“For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

“He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“The influence of the Holy Spirit is the life of Christ in the soul. We do not see Christ and speak to Him, but His Holy Spirit is just as near us in one place as in another. It works in and through every one who receives Christ. Those who know the indwelling of the Spirit reveal the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith (MS 41, 1897).”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

“He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks. But he is still great.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

“Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“The philosophy of self-denial also taught the brotherhood of man, based on the Stoical belief that every human being without distinction possesses a spark of divinity that is in communion with God, who in the Stoical system is called Logos (Word, Reason, Meaning)—the word John's Gospel uses to describe Jesus.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

“Man is what he is, because a spiritual element has entered into, and taken possession of, animal consciousness. This spiritual element is not, according to Christian teaching, divine: but it is capable of entering into relations with God. It can perceive Him: in thought, it can reason as to His nature and actions: in will and feeling, it can serve and love Him, or disobey and fear Him. Such activity shows itself in what we call the working of conscience.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

“It takes pure love to be possessed by the spirit of God.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author