Idolatry quotes:

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Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another. -- John Selden
Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain. -- John Calvin
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry. -- George Bernard Shaw
Idolatry is really not good for anyone. Not even the idols. -- John Bach
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. -- Pope John Paul II
Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more. -- William Wordsworth
One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. -- Swami Vivekananda
I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors. -- Meryl Streep
It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer. -- Virginia Woolf
Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object. -- Northrop Frye
Idolatry is permissible in Hinduism when it sub serves an ideal. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function. -- Julian Jaynes
Idolatry happens when we take good things and make them ultimate things -- Timothy Keller
How the Idolatry of Christian Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Takes Two General Forms -- Joe Carter
Idolatry is when you worship what you should use, and use what you should worship. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations -- Os Guinness
Idolatry is when you become the source of your own joy. Poverty of spirit is a wonderful thing. -- Paul Washer
Idolatry is worshipping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshipped. -- Saint Augustine
Idolatry is not simply worshiping a stone image; idolatry is any concept of God that reduces Him to less than who He really is. -- Ron Carlson
It [idolatry] nourishes mans ambition to domineer over his fellow man. Idolatry, therefore, is the source of all social and moral evil in the world. -- Abba Eban
Idolatry, like all sin, is devastating to the soul. It cuts us off from the comforts of grace, the peace of conscience, and the joy that is to be our strength. -- Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. -- Pope Francis
True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. -- John Shelby Spong
Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Idolatry happens when you worship or praise anything excessively to the point of causing you to believe it reigns supreme. All things on this earth are temporal, even your very own desires. Be careful that you do not create idols to worship. -- Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty. -- Ann Oakley
The world has not gone one step beyond idolatry yet. -- Swami Vivekananda
Tis mad idolatry To make the service greater than the god. -- William Shakespeare
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging. -- Martin Luther
To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry. -- N. T. Wright
The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. -- Aiden Wilson Tozer
Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain. -- Swami Vivekananda
When your thoughts and opinions become intellectual gods in rebellion against the Word of God, you are in idolatry. -- John Hagee
The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we have ever heard of. -- Orson Pratt
The secret of image - worship is that you are trying to develop your vision of Divinity in one thing. -- Swami Vivekananda
Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again. -- Lionel Blue
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What I find interesting is that the people that follow your Twitters are called 'followers.' Talk about false idolatry, right? -- Emilio Estevez
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it. -- Swami Vivekananda
Too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry, but intense love for the Guru makes rapid growth possible. -- Swami Vivekananda
When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's. -- Timothy Keller
We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol. -- John Ortberg
Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man's idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought. -- Charles Spurgeon
There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. -- Karen Armstrong
Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. -- Thomas B. Macaulay
This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do. -- Swami Vivekananda
In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar. -- Trevor Nunn
What we need to affirm is that Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Whenever we marry Jesus to a political party, we are committing the sin of idolatry. We are making Jesus into the image of our political party. -- Tony Campolo
We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika. -- Swami Vivekananda
And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government. -- Sharron Angle
Patriotism is idolatry of the self. -- Simone Weil
Self-love is an idolatry. Self-hatred is a tragedy. -- Elizabeth Hardwick
Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. -- Swami Vivekananda
Only the gospel exposes the cancer of idolatry. -- Christopher J. H. Wright
The opposite of theism is not atheism, it's idolatry -- Peter Kreeft
The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry. -- Peter Kreeft
Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry. -- Krister Stendahl
The enemy of joy is not suffering, it is idolatry. -- Matt Papa
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The heart of all idolatry in the Bible is the de-godding of God. -- D. A. Carson
If we esteem them too highly, good works can become the greatest idolatry. -- Martin Luther
Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism--the idolatry of the 20th century. -- Cornel West
Ultimately all idolatry is worship of the self projected and objectified: all idolization is self-idolization. -- Will Herberg
Anything that I want, I must also be ok with not having, otherwise it's idolatry. -- Mike Donehey
Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry. -- Martin Luther
His (Lincoln's) patriotism was saved from idolatry by the overwhelming sense of the sovereignty of God. -- Elton Trueblood
Saint Augustine defined idolatry as worshiping what should be used or using what should be worshiped -- Colin S. Smith
The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State. -- Simone Weil
I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion. -- Voltaire
Whatever a man seeks, honors, or exalts more than God, this is the god of idolatry. -- William Bernard Ullathorne
A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry. -- William Hazlitt
I have ever thought so superstitiously of wit, that I fear I have committed idolatry against wisdom. -- John Lyly
For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the Giver himself? -- John Calvin
A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart. Nay, even idolatry is ample evidence of this fact. -- Augustine of Hippo
To walk into the Jefferson memorial is to be in a temple of the pure idolatry of reason -- Scot McKnight
Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images. Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry. -- Robert Dale Owen
The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we have ever heard of -- Orson Pratt
If religion might be judged of according to men's intentions, there would scarcely be any idolatry in the world. -- Joseph Hall
I make an idol of my moral consciousness. My pursuit of the good is corrupted by the sin of idolatry. -- Susan Sontag
Those who lapse from the Gospel to the Law are no better off than those who lapse from grace to idolatry. -- Martin Luther
It is time to cease to argue about God , and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry. -- Erich Fromm
Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows. -- Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry. -- Robert Charles Wilson
If I put things between me and Christ, it is idolatry. If I put Christ between me and things, it is victory! -- Adrian Rogers
Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age -- Lord Chesterfield
The whole youth-idolatry oh-god-not-another-birthday thing has to be the most sure-fire way to be unhappy about the way things are progressing in your life. -- Nat Friedman
We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry. -- John Piper
Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? -- Mary Baker Eddy
The only way to revive Temple worship is through repentance. The men of Judah must give up their idolatry and turn their hearts back to God." -- Lynn Austin
To have a faith, therefore, or a trust in anything, where God hath not promised, is plain idolatry, and a worshipping of thine own imagination instead of God. -- William Tyndale
When literature becomes overly erudite, it means that interest in the art has gone and curiosity about the artist is what's important. It becomes a kind of idolatry. -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
If anyone does not refrain from the love of money, he will be defiled by idolatry and so be judged as if he were one of the heathen. -- Polycarp
The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all, regardless of how worthy the idolatry that he or she has substituted for it. -- Richard J. Foster
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address Thou God of our idolatry, the Press. . . . . Like Eden's dead probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee. -- William Cowper
The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry , the only ersatz of God , the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself. -- Simone Weil
The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Mass is the greatest blasphemy of God, and the highest idolatry upon earth, an abomination the like of which has never been in Christendom since the time of the Apostles. -- Martin Luther
Whatever thing a man sets his heart on...is his god; and if his god doesn't also happen to be the true and living God of Israel that man is laboring in idolatry. -- Spencer W. Kimball
The greatest miracle of the Bible is that the prophets of Israel could keep a religion as clean as a hounds tooth amid all the corruption and idolatry of the nations surrounding them. -- Billy Graham
One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another. -- Simone Weil
The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud. -- Thomas Paine
Wherever public worship has been established and regularly aintained, idolatry has vanished from the face of the earth. There is not now a temple to a heathen god where the word of God is read. -- Matthew Simpson
The flag of your nation - wave it! Begin to separate your nation from whatever covenant your forefathers must have had. Break the covenant of corruption/ stealing/ killing/ destruction/ idolatry - break it right now! -- T. B. Joshua
I call that church free which enters into the covenant with the ultimate source of existence. It binds together families and generations, protecting against the idolatry of any human claim to absolute truth or authority. -- James Luther Adams
The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols. -- George Bernard Shaw

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