“Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God, holds other people in contempt. Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the worst is a slave in power.”
Some Reasons Why (1881)
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Robert G. Ingersoll439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899Related quotes
Henry D. Moyle (1889–1963) Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Conversation with President w:Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve driving back from Arizona and talking about a man who destroyed the faith of young people from the vantage point of a teaching position, but who had not yet been formally excommunicated. Reported in The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than The Intellect, a talk given by Pres. Packer at the Fifth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators' Symposium, 22 August, 1981, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. For an official transcript see Brigham Young University Studies, Summer 1981.
Quotes as an apostle
James Frazer book The Golden Bough
Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 24, The Killing of the Divine King.
Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor
Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), p. 370
James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian
Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 39
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 76
Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God
IV, 3
Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
The City of God (early 400s)
Context: The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, “For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.”