Quotes about Christ
page 16

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Thomas Brooks photo
John Ross Macduff photo
Augusto Pinochet photo

“Don't forget that in the history of the world, there was a plebiscite, in which Christ and Barabbas were being judged, and the people chose Barabbas.”

Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006) Former dictator of the republic of Chile

Speech (25 October 1988), commenting on his defeat in a plebiscite to return to democracy. Quoted in Pamela Constable et al. (1991) A Nation of Enemies
1980s

Kent Hovind photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Mark Hopkins (educator) photo

“Certainly, no revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 64.

John Fante photo
Richard Watson photo
Marc Chagall photo

“When I painted Christ's parents I was thinking of my own parents. The bearded man is the Child's father. He is my father.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Chagall stated this in 1950
as quoted in From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, Matthew B. Hoffman; Stanford University Press, 2007, p. 219
after 1930

Bernard Lewis photo
John Updike photo
James Fenimore Cooper photo

“I do not pretend to understand why such a sacrifice should be necessary, but I believe it, feel it; and believing and feeling it, I cannot but adore and worship the Son, who quitted heaven to come on earth, and suffered, that we might possess eternal life. It is all mystery to me, as is the creation itself, our existence, God himself, and all else that my mind is too limited to comprehend. But, Roswell, if I believe a part of the teachings of the Christian church, I must believe all. The apostles, who were called by Christ in person, who lived in his very presence, who knew nothing except as the Holy Spirit prompted, worshiped him as the Son of God, as one 'who thought it not robbery to be equal with God;' and shall I, ignorant and uninspired, pretend to set up my feeble means of reasoning, in opposition to their written instructions!"… I do not deny that we are to exercise our reason, but it is within the bounds set for its exercise. We may examine the evidence of Christianity, and determine for ourselves how far it is supported by reasonable and sufficient proofs; beyond this we cannot be expected to go, else might we be required to comprehend the mystery of our own existence, which just as much exceeds our understanding as any other. We are told that man was created in the image of his Creator, which means that there is an immortal and spiritual part of him that is entirely different from the material creature One perishes, temporarily at least--a limb can be severed from the body and perish, even while the body survives; but it is not so with that which has been created in the image of the deity. That is imperishable, immortal, spiritual, though doomed to dwell awhile in a tenement of clay. Now, why is it more difficult to believe that pure divinity may have entered into the person of one man, than to believe, nay to feel, that the image of God has entered into the persons of so many myriads of men?”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers (1849), Ch. XII

John Calvin photo
Ray Comfort photo
Mai Văn Phấn photo

“The poetic creation is nearly like the amazement state of a child who, in the first time, sees the strange phenomena of nature and finds out the human mysteries and complications… The poet is a selected person (temporarily called as a God-selected person), who is “granted a favour”in the spirit of Jesus Christ, or meets a “good fortune” in Buddhism.”

Mai Văn Phấn (1955) Vietnamese poet

Sáng tạo, tinh thần cho điểm đến - Nhà thơ Ko Hyeong Ryeol thực hiện PV http://maivanphan.vn/MaiVanPhan/32/398/781/1102/Tra-loi-phong-van/Sang-tao--tinh-than-cho-diem-den---Nha-tho-Ko-Hyeong-Ryeol-thuc-hien-PV.aspx

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge photo
Edith Hamilton photo
Horace Bushnell photo
Berenice Abbott photo

“The Baroness was like Jesus Christ and Shakespeare all rolled into one and perhaps she was the most influential person to me in the early part of my life.”

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) American photographer

Quoted in Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity, 2002.
Referring to Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Jacopone da Todi photo

“Now, a new creature, I in Christ am born,
The old man stripped away; -- I am new-made;
And mounting in me, like the sun at morn,
Love breaks my heart, even as a broken blade:
Christ, First and Only Fair, from me hath shorn
My will, my wits, and all that in me stayed,
I in His arms am laid,
I cry and call --
O Thou my All,
O let me die of Love!”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

From All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time, As air becomes the medium for light when the sun rises, and as wax melts from the heat of fire, so the soul drawn to that light is resplendent, feels self melt awayby Robert Ellsberg

Donald Barthelme photo
Francis Xavier photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
François Fénelon photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Dwight L. Moody photo

“The last business of Christ's life was the saving of a poor penitent thief.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 73.

Horace Bushnell photo

“Christ wants to lead men by their love, their personal love to Him, and the confidence of His personal love to them.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 80.

“Jesus Christ is not hurried; He calmly rules the storm, and holds the helm of this world in His hand, and it will not drift away from the course designated by the infinite authority and power of God.”

David Seth Doggett (1810–1880) American bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 77.

Mike Scott photo
Dwight L. Moody photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Robert Sarah photo
Godfrey Higgins photo
Epiphanius of Salamis photo

“It is a horrid abomination to see in Christian temples a painted image either of Christ or of any saint.”

Epiphanius of Salamis (315–403) Christian bishop and saint

Epistle to Hieron, as cited by John Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion

Samuel I. Prime photo
Clement of Alexandria photo
Edward Thomson photo
Frederic Dan Huntington photo
John Ruysbroeck photo

“Here comes Jesus, and sees the man, and shows to him, in the light of faith, that He is according to His Godhead immeasurable and incomprehensible and inaccessible and abysmal, transcending every created light and every finite conception. And this is the highest knowledge of God which any man may have in the active life: that he should confess in this light of faith that God is incomprehensible and unknowable. And in this light Christ says to man’s desire: Make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy house. This hasty descent, to which he is summoned by God, is nothing else than a descent through desire and through love into the abyss of the Godhead, which no intelligence can reach in the created light. But where intelligence remains without, desire and love go in. When the soul is thus stretched towards God, by intention and by love, above everything that it can understand, then it rests and dwells in God, and God in it. When the soul climbs with desire above the multiplicity of creatures, and above the works of the senses, and above the light of nature, then it meets Christ in the light of faith, and becomes enlightened, and confesses that God is unknowable and incomprehensible. When it stretches itself with longing towards this incomprehensible God, then it meets Christ, and is filled with His gifts. And when it loves and rests above all gifts, and above itself, and above all creatures, then it dwells in God, and God dwells in it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/asm/index.htm Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Patrick Kavanagh photo
Henry Van Dyke photo
Peter Abelard photo

“St. Jerome, whose heir methinks I am in the endurance of foul slander, says in his letter to Nepotanius: "The apostle says: 'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' He no longer seeks to please men, and so is made Christ's servant" (Epist. 2). And again, in his letter to Asella regarding those whom he was falsely accused of loving: "I give thanks to my God that I am worthy to be one whom the world hates" (Epist. 99). And to the monk Heliodorus he writes: "You are wrong, brother, you are wrong if you think there is ever a time when the Christian does not suffer persecution. For our adversary goes about as a roaring lion seeking what he may devour, and do you still think of peace? Nay, he lieth in ambush among the rich."
Inspired by those records and examples, we should endure our persecutions all the more steadfastly the more bitterly they harm us. We should not doubt that even if they are not according to our deserts, at least they serve for the purifying of our soul. And since all things are done in accordance with the divine ordering, let every one of true faith console himself amid all his afflictions with the thought that the great goodness of God permits nothing to be done without reason, and brings to a good end whatsoever may seem to happen wrongfully. Wherefore rightly do all men say: "Thy will be done." And great is the consolation to all lovers of God in the word of the Apostle when he says: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. viii, 28). The wise man of old had this in mind when he said in his Proverbs: "There shall no evil happen to the just" (Prov. xii, 21). By this he clearly shows that whosoever grows wrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departed from the way of the just, because he may not doubt that these things have happened to him by divine dispensation. ///Even such are those who yield to their own rather than to the divine purpose, and with hidden desires resist the spirit which echoes in the words, "Thy will be done," thus placing their own will ahead of the will of God. Farewell.”

Peter Abelard (1079–1142) French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician

Source: Historia Calamitatum (c. 1132), Ch. XV

Richard Smalley photo
Cory Doctorow photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Mahadev Govind Ranade photo
Henry Liddon photo

“Mr. Weiss: I know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Holocaust http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0054/0054_01.asp" (1984)

Walker Percy photo
Brigham Young photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo

“Within a few days I will go to the papal Legate [Pucci], and if he shall open a conversation on the subject as he did before, I will urge him to warn the Pope not to issue an excommunication [against Luther], for which I think would be greatly against him [the Pope]. For if it be issued I believe the Germans will equally despise the Pope and the excommunication. But do you be of good cheer, for our day will not lack those who will teach Christ faithfully, and who will give up their lives for Him willingly, even though among men their names shall not be in good repute after this life…So far as I am concerned I look for all evil from all of them: I mean both ecclesiastics and laymen. I beseech Christ for this one thing only, that He will enable me to endure all things courageously, and that He break me as a potter's vessel or make me strong, as it pleased Him. If I be excommunicated I shall think of the learned and holy Hilary, who was exiled from France to Africa, and of Lucius, who though driven from his seat at Rome returned again with great honour. Not that I compare myself with them: for as they were better than i so they suffered what was a greater ignominy. And yet if it were good to flory I would rejoice to suffer insult for the name of Christ. But let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Lately I have read scarcely any thing of Luther's; but what I have seen of his hitherto does not seem to me to stray from gospel teaching. You know - if you rememeber - that what I have always spoken of in terms of the highest commendation in him is that he supports his position with authoritative witness.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

As cited in Huldreich Zwingli, the Reformer of German Switzerland, 1484-1531 by Samuel Macauley Jackson, John Martin Vincent, Frank Hugh Foster, p.148-149

Anish Kapoor photo
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
David Whitmer photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo

“Christ … was born of a most undefiled Virgin.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
William A. Dembski photo

“The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ…. And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view…. It's important that we understand the world. God has created it; Jesus is incarnate in the world.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

"Defeating Darwinism in Our Culture" panel discussion, National Religious Broadcasters meeting, Anaheim, 2000-02-06, as quoted in [2006, Why Darwin matters: the case against intelligent design, Michael, Shermer, New York, Times Books, 978-0-8050-8306-4, [QH366.2.S494, 2006], 2006041243]
2000s

John Kennedy Toole photo
Frederick Buechner photo
David Lloyd George photo

“Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Comment about Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau, when asked, in 1919 upon his return from the Paris Peace Conference, as to how he had done there; as quoted in the article "International Relations" in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1993)
Prime Minister

Flower A. Newhouse photo
Kate Bush photo
Ken Ham photo

“Christ's true people are branded with love.”

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Ray Bradbury photo
Edith Sitwell photo
John Calvin photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Henri Matisse photo
Samuel Rutherford photo

“Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 124.

Ernest Barnes photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Justin Welby photo
Frank Sinatra photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Christ, people. Learn C, instead of just stringing random characters together until it compiles”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

with warnings
Torvalds, Linus, 2015-09-03, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds on the LKM mailing list</nowiki>, 2015-09-30 https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/9/3/428,
2010s, 2015

James K. Morrow photo
Robert M. Price photo

“Though he [Charles Guignebert] could not accept either the Christ myth theory, which held that no historical Jesus existed, or the Dutch Radical denial that Paul authored any of the epistles, Guignebert took both quite seriously.”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

[Price, Robert M., w:Robert M. Price, Tom Flynn, Richard Dawkins, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, https://books.google.com/books?id=fsZ26vQxJKMC&pg=PA372, 2007, Prometheus Books, Publishers, 978-1-61592-280-2, 372, Guignebert, Charles]

Anton Chekhov photo
Flower A. Newhouse photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Robert Graves photo

“The captain-general’s ship flew at its mast a flag on which was painted a large cross of Christ and also carried cannon, symbols of the new power entering the East.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945