Top 306 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Scholars - Page 2

I think that it’s premature to call Libya a democracy because political order is still so fragile there and the command by the state over the means of violence is still so inadequate that I think state building remains a major challenge. And until the militias can be reined in and the authority of the democratically-elected state can really be firmly established, there’s still tremendous fragility and vulnerability in the unfolding story in Libya.

India is simply dotted with pilgrimage places, and with teachers and very powerful spiritual guides.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Do you know who will go first on the Day of Resurrection to the shade of God...Those who when given what is right accept it, when asked for something give freely and who judge in favor of others as they do for themselves."

We cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's homework for her. That's an energy drain. More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of being reduced to purvey­ors of resource lists.

I think you have a deeply anxious leadership in China that knows its legitimacy is drifting away, that’s sending its [personal] money and its children abroad because they have no faith in the future of their own regime.

The critical principle of feminist theology is the promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, appraised as not redemptive.

Jesus wanted far more than to be accepted into one's life. He wanted to take over, and his essential call was to trust him enough to surrender one's entire being to him.

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: "Indeed, an ignorant man who is generous is dearer to God than a worshipper who is miserly."

It is a form of generational narcissism to change texts to suit one's own needs.

One of God's central qualities is compassion, a word that in Hebrew is related to the word for "womb." Not only is compassion a female image suggesting source of life and nourishment but it also has a feeling dimension: God as compassionate Spirit feels for us as a mother feels for the children of her womb. Spirit feels the suffering of the world and participates in it. . . .

We do not have thousands of years to unlearn the wrong patters that were established over thousands of years. The exponential speed-up of these cumulative patterns of destruction means we have to both learn new patterns and put them into practice on a global scale within the next generation.

To separate from my culture (as from my family) I had to feel competent enough on the outside and secure enough inside to live life on my own. Yet in leaving home I did not lose touch with my origins because lo mexicano is in my system. I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry 'home' on my back.

And I say to you, you are Kepha, and on this kepha I will build my church.

Who would not prefer animals to these people who prefer animals to people?

There is nothing like marriage, for two who love one another.

... what we should be looking for is fresh ideas of how we make moral decisions about our dealings with one another, economic, social, cultural. Economic determinism is an objectionable creed where men and women espouse it in its communist or capitalist form because it treats human beings as economic units and not as responsible persons.

An effort to declare the ban on contraception ‘infallible’ would have the immediate effect of focusing Catholic dissent on the doctrine of infallibility itself. . . . A storm of dissent, and even ridicule, directed at infallibility itself would ensue from such a declaration.

Every hero mirrors the time and place in which he lives. He must reflect men's innermost hopes and beliefs in a public way.

The principal problem is that textual data and material remains are often incomplete and sometimes lack adequate context, in order to know precisely how they correlate. Sometimes all we can say is that the textual data and the material remains are probably related but how exactly can't be said until additional discoveries are made.

In fact, I think 500 years from now, the two Americans so far who will be remembered are George Washington and Neil Armstrong, who, amazingly hasn't been paid very much attention.

Those who would give us a "living" Constitution are actually giving us a dead one, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power.

As a human being, the way Jesus responded to God in faithful obedience and gave his life in service to other humans-is the pattern for all authentic humanity renewed by the Spirit of God.

The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con el destierro y el exilo fuimos desuñados, destroncados, destripados - we were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disemboweled, dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history.

Persistence in prayer for someone whom we don't like, however much it goes against the grain to begin with, brings about a remarkable change in attitude.

Imagine that it’s not about the self and its concerns, about ‘what’s in it for me,’ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life.

The ultimate end of redemption is that we worship God with our whole being and in the whole company of the redeemed.

Judas is a reflection of anyone who ends up rejecting Jesus. It's a tragic story?not something to shake your finger at, but something to be sad about.

The U.S.-Mexican border es un herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture.

Religion is much more than language, but to be Christian does mean speaking Christian for most people. The language many of us use has contributed to the crisis in Christianity in North America. Traditional Christian language is becoming less familiar to millions of people. The language is frequently misunderstood by people.

I guess one of the things that is an advantage of the world in which we live is that I can at least I can have multiple homes. I can have that attachment to Montana and to Cambridge and to India.

Seminary also introduced me to the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins. I learned from my professors and the readings they assigned that Jesus almost certainly was not born of a virgin, did not think of himself as the Son of God, and did not see his purpose as dying for the sins of the world. .. I also found the claim that Jesus and Christianity were the only way of salvation to be troublesome.

I had to leave home so I could find myself, find my own intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on me.

Each conquest of distance reveals greater distance.

The liberating encounter with God/ess is always an encounter with our authentic selves resurrected from underneath the alienated self. It is not experienced against, but in and through relationships, healing our broken relations with our bodies, with other people, with nature.

Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.

We desperately need in this country a discussion of American policy toward Russia. We can't keep saying an untruth, that this new Cold War is solely the fault of Putin. We need to rethink our policy toward Russia.

The image I have sketched views Jesus differently: rather than being the exclusive revelation of God, he is one of many mediators of the sacred.

God was on the move; God is on the move; and God will always be on the move. Those who walk with God and listen to God are also on the move. Reading the Bible so we can live it out today means being on the move—always. Anyone who stops and wants to turn a particular moment into a monument, as the disciples did when Jesus was transfigured before them, will soon be wondering where God has gone.

The dog who doesn't bark is about a silence that speaks; it is a good metaphor for the Pariah voice, the dog's voice, that we can sometimes hear only when it does not speak.

Within the world of TV land, into which American life has been reduced as well as reproduced, the phenomenon of the talk show has emerged as a genre located somewhere on the spectrum between coffee klatch and town meeting, or perhaps between the psychiatrist's couch and the crowd scene at a bad accident.

Don't try to impress God with your works" or "Don't attempt to please God with your merits" or "Don't try to keep the rules and regulations in order to earn your salvation." He looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly casual Christians and wondered, "Who's trying?

Sanctification is glory begun. Glory is sanctification completed.

The Gospel of Judas turns Judas' act of betrayal into an act of obedience. The sacrifice of Jesus' body of flesh in fact becomes saving. And so for that reason, Judas emerges as the champion and he ends up being envied and even cursed and resented by the other disciples.

(Sarah Palin's) greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.

Angels emerge from the presence of God and worship of God, are sent on mission for our redemption, so it doesn't surprise me to read in the Bible of angels leading us into the presence of God in worship.

Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an "alien" element.

It is comforting that travel should have an architecture, and that it is possible to contribute a few stones to it, although the traveller is less like one who constructs landscapes -- for that is a sedentary task -- than like one who destroys them. . . . But even destruction is a form of architecture, a deconstruction that follows certain rules and calculations, an art of disassembling and reassembling, or of creating another and different order.

Angels will frequently - even when they're comforting us with good news - touch the awe of God's eternal presence and drive us to our knees before our God of glory.

Love one another strenuously because it's hard.

If you are expecting Paul to read the Bible like it was set in stone, you will find yourself getting pretty nervous. For Paul, now that Jesus has come, the Bible was more like clay to be molded.

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: "Do not turn away a poor man...even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you...God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection."

A photographer is like a writer... you're writing with your lens so make sure you tell a good story.

All actions without love are just like dust in the air.

God bestows His blessings without discrimination. The followers of Jesus are children of God, and they should manifest the family likeness by doing good to all, even to those who deserve the opposite.

I have a hard time picturing several aspects of the modern world without Luther.

Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them... It is wise to remember that when we are reading letters never intended for us, any problems of understanding are ours and not theirs.

I have no fresh-from-the-oven mother-daughter recollections - only the daily creaking of cans being opened and the sucking sound of gelatinous vegetables splurting from their tin-encased vacuums. Her kitchen was filled with smoke and impatience. ... And so I grew up finding my own path, frying what could not be boiled, winging my way through life without recipes.

God is love so all God does is loving.

The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators [which are] particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan...My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

Whatever else may be thought of the evidence from early Jewish and Gentile writers it does at least establish, for those who refuse the witness of Christian writings, the historical character of Jesus Himself.