“the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.”
Source: American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics
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Dan Savage17
American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner 1964Related quotes
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 38
Context: There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist
Letter (8 November 1952); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 247
J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop
Matthew IV: 1–11, p. 26
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Matthew (1856)
“I want to redeem my life. I want to become a good, decent person. I want to rebuild my life.”
Jared Fogle (1977) American corporate mascot
On pleading guilty to having sex with minors and possession of child pornography, as quoted in "Jared Fogle, ex-Subway spokesman, sentenced to 15 years in prison" http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/jared-fogle-subway-1.3326594?cmp=rss by Rick Callahan in CBC News report. (19 November 2015)
“A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss”
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic
Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betressend (1780-81), Vierundzwanzigster Brief; cited from Bernhard Suphan (ed.) Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913) vol. 10, p. 260. Translation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biographia Literaria (London: Rest Fenner, 1817) vol. 1, ch. 11, pp. 233-34.
Context: With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, to all probability reads amiss; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor.
“When people say that the Bible and politics don't mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading.”
Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner
Attributed but unsourced
Source: http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/blog/january-2015/Faith-and-politics-a-match-made-in-heaven.aspx
Source: https://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/worshipandmusic/sermon-archive/anticipating-the-general-election
“Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”
Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian
“The universe is the bible of a true Theophilanthropist. It is there that he reads of God.”
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
Context: The universe is the bible of a true Theophilanthropist. It is there that he reads of God. It is there that the proofs of his existence are to be sought and to be found. As to written or printed books, by whatever name they are called, they are the works of man's hands, and carry no evidence in themselves that God is the author of any of them. It must be in something that man could not make, that we must seek evidence for our belief, and that something is the universe; the true bible; the inimitable word, of God.