Top 188 Clergy Quotes & Sayings

God looked upon His work and saw that it was good. That is where the clergy take issue with him.

You know you're in a bad movie when the Catholic clergy is being played by Jews.

Clergy are men as well as other folks.

If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.

The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.

The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.

To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.

The Clergy is the greatest hindrance to faith.

That level of expectation that I'm going to be conservative is really disappointing, but it is how many people think about clergy and the church

For both Protestants and Catholics, and whether or not absolute continence is demanded of the clergy, celibacy remains a blessed spiritual state.

Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.

But the most dangerous Hypocrite in a Common-Wealth, is one who leaves the Gospel for the sake of the Law: A Man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat a whole Country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law: And here the Clergy are in great Danger of being deceiv'd, and the People of being deceiv'd by the Clergy, until the Monster arrives to such Power and Wealth, that he is out of the reach of both, and can oppress the People without their own blind Assistance.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

The elite attack religious people and clergy with a vengeance.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.

The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

By dividing the people of God as clergy and laymen, we have made the latter a majority of lame men.

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.

It has not been without bitter resistance by the clergy that woman's property and educational rights have advanced. Woman's anti-slavery work, her temperance work, her demand for personal rights, for political equality, for religious freedom and every step of kindred character has met with opposition from the church as a body and from the clergy as exponents of its views.

The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.

Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favor.

I found that the clergy did not understand their own book.

It is time the clergy are told that thinking men, after a close examination of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development and, therefore, positively noxious.

You must believe in God, in spite of what the clergy say.

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

Someone who's asking questions of the clergy, that he doesn't have the answers to, I think that's a universal predicament.

Give the clergy your sympathy; don't give them anything else.

I'm not OK with clergy, students, and those of different opinions chanting and swearing, but it is their constitutional right.

I think the issue of clergy sexual abuse sparked people to look at their faith in a different way.

until the theologians and the ordained clergy begin to communicate with ordinary people in the vernacular, in a way that they can understand, I’m going to have to do this sort of thing.

If you need help, look to clergy who do not spout their own beliefs but direct you in sincerity by using the Bible.

Whenever the clergy succeeded in conquering political power in any country, the result has been disastrous to the interests of religion and inimical to the progress of humanity.

Two studies from the year 2000, however, indicate that Catholics give lower ratings to their clergy's ministerial activities across the board than do Protestants.

I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church-an equality in the teacher of Religion, and a dependence on the people, are republican sentiments-but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government

Humility is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet every body is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.

The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church - a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students never graduate.

You mean am I for it or against it? You think this is a key question I'm going to be asked on Vega, and you want to make sure I give the right answer? Okay. Overpopulation is why I'm in favor of homosexuality and a celibate clergy. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].

If the Church is not Making Disciples, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.

The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important.

Benefit of clergy: Half-rate on the railroad.

There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.

Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.

Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.

My dear child, you must believe in God despite what the clergy tells you.

That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.

The problem is that, regardless of what our theologies tell us about the purpose of the clergy, the actual effect of the clergy profession is to make the body of Christ lame. This happens not because clergy intend it (they usually intend the opposite) but because the objective nature of the profession inevitably turns the laity into passive receivers.

A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.

And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.

The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.

You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.