“It is only the fear of God, can deliver us from the fear of man.”
From his sermon "Ministerial Character and Duty". Usually misquoted as "It is only the fear of God that can deliver us from the fear of man."
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John Witherspoon 3
Scottish-American Presbyterian minister and a Founding Fath… 1723–1794Related quotes
Deut. x. 12
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.29
“The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.”
The City Hall Square Speech, July 25. 2011 ( Aftenposten http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article4185069.ece).
2010s
“It is man's duty to love and to fear God, even without hope of reward or fear of punishment.”
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.24
"A Reply to Kenneth Tynan: The Playwright's Role" in The Observer (29 June 1958)
Context: I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
“When fear has seized upon the mind, man fears that only which he first began to fear.”
Ubi intravit animos pavor, id solum metuunt, quod primum formidare cœperunt.
IV, 16, 17.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book IV
“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”