A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. ...I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

Thomas Jefferson

Quote Topics

Abhor Cannot Compulsion Distinguished Every Other Religion Saved Thing Worship

Quote Author

Thomas Jefferson
American - President
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826

Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.

Mahatma Gandhi

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

Thomas Jefferson

There are three things we have to let go of. The first is the compulsion to be successful. Second, is the compulsion to be right-especially theologically right. (That's merely an ego trip, and because of this "need" churches split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos.) Finally, there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control.

Richard Rohr

I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It's a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking.

Edward Norton

It must always be remembered that you can never do right until you are first free to do wrong; since the doing of a thing under compulsion is evidence neither of good nor bad intent; and if under compulsion, who shall decide what would be the substituted rule of action under full freedom?

Victoria Woodhull

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

Max Horkheimer

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

Friedrich Nietzsche

the compulsion to read and write - and it seems to me it should be, even must be, a compulsion - is a bit of mental wiring the species has selected, over time, in order, as the life span increases, to keep us interested in ourselves.

Lorrie Moore

In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.

Rollo May

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

Joan Didion

The drive to resist compulsion is more important in wild animals than sex, food, or water... The drive for competence or to resist compulsion is a drive to avoid helplessness.

Martin Seligman

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.