A Quote by Thomas Carlyle
No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.
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No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!
When people say do you believe in God? what do they mean by it? Do I believe in some spiritual force in the world? In a way, yes. People have thoughts, emotions. If you want to call that a spiritual force, okay. But unless there's some clarification of what we're supposed to believe in or disbelieve in, I can't answer.
An iron chain is less difficult to break than a chain of flowers.
Religion is simply an ideal. It is an ideal force that tends to free the human being from material bonds. I do not believe that matter and energy are interchangeable, any more than are the body and soul. There is just so much matter in the universe and it cannot be destroyed. As I see life on this planet, there is no individuality. It may sound ridiculous to say so, but I believe each person is but a wave passing through space, ever-changing from minute to minute as it travels along, finally, some day, just becoming dissolved.
It is scripture alone, not conservative Evangelical tradition or any other human authority, that must function as the normative authority for the definition of what we should believe. The authority of the scripture means that all the words in scripture are God's words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God.
What matters is being a particular kind of person. At the most basic level, it matters that you are the kind of person who resolves problems with force of thought and feeling instead of with the force of arms.
It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights.
You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.
Such as the chain of causes we call Fate, such is the chain of wishes: one links on to another; the whole man is bound in the chain of wishing for ever.
Slavery is slavery. The chain of gold is quite as bad as the chain of iron. Is there a way out?
I'm allergic to dogma. I thrive on riddles. Any idea I believe, I reserve the right to disbelieve as well.
The city is the image of the soul, the surrounding walls being the frontier between the outward and inward life. The gates are the faculties or senses connecting the life of the soul with the outward world. Living springs of water rise within it. And in the centre, where beats the heart, stands the holy sanctuary.
We have to create a world in which there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other end of any missiles, and that is going to take a tremendous amount of sheer hard work. The only force which can break down those barriers is the force of love, the force of truth, soul-force.
There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
Here's what I believe a soul is - at least this, I believe it's at least this. I believe that every kindness that we create in our lives, if it came because we were affected by a person we loved and lost, that person lives through that kindness. That's what a soul is.
I don't believe anybody has a right to own any kind of a firearm. I believe in order to obtain a permit to own a firearm, that person should undergo an exhaustive criminal background check. In addition, an applicant should give up his right to privacy and submit his medical records for review to see if the person has ever had a problem with alcohol, drugs or mental illness... The Constitution doesn't count!
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