Rob Bell Quotes

To create guilt, all that you need is a very simple thing: start calling mistakes, errors - sins. They are simply mistakes, human. Now, if somebody commits a mistake in mathematics - two plus two, and he concludes it makes five - you don't say he has committed a sin. He is unalert, he is not paying attention to what he is doing. He is unprepared, he has not done his homework. He is certainly committing a mistake, but a mistake is not a sin. It can be corrected. A mistake does not make him feel guilty. At the most it makes him feel foolish.

I'd rather believe in my own choice and see it all go wrong than do something I'm not fully convinced of and later feel guilty about it.

I have never met a woman who works who doesn't feel guilty. I mean we all deny it like crazy but deep down there is always that voice saying you should be at home.

I have no better way of judging guilt or innocence than anyone else.

Motherhood has been an exercise in guilt.

My mother should have been Jewish. She could have taught a class on how to induce guilt.

Everybody is probably guilty of something. I'm sure that if anyone looked into my heart long enough, they could say, you know, 'Bill had some unkind thoughts back in second grade.'

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.

I came up from growing up with a lot of Catholic guilt, a lot of punk rock, hipster guilt in the later years where I think people have thrown a lot of things on me. Where I always felt like I'm not supposed to tell the horn section what to play or I don't want to come off egotistical.

Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, because Barack Obama has voted to behave in a way that is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved

Conscience: something that feels terrible when everything else feels well.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.

As a woman and as a mother, as a young mother, I felt guilty about being successful.

The mere acknowledgment that 'God is watching' can act as a trap, fueling bad behavior, corruption, and guilt, all remedied by God's forgiveness. No personal responsibility is needed - someone on the outside sees whatever we're doing and makes it all OK.

I was made to believe there's something wrong with me.

I feel like as a generation, we sell ourselves short. I just expected more from us.

I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone?

Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach.

I am suspicious of guilt in myself and in other people; it is usually a way of not thinking, or of announcing one's own fine sensibilities the better to be rid of them fast.

Between the combination of Judeo-Christian religious 'be good be good be good' and Capitalist 'something's wrong with you, buy this' and the parental upbringing, which is 'you're wrong, you're not thin enough, you're not smart enough' I mean, hello! We don't have a shot.

The fashion industry [is] built on, and thrives on, our collective insecurity.

A guilty conscience never feels secure.

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks.

Dogmatic religion has been used to fantastic effect over thousands of years to fuel and exploit emotions like fear and guilt, and the feeling of being 'unworthy'. This has encouraged people to hand over their right to think and feel to a Bible and a priest because they have not had the confidence or self-belief to realize that they have a right, and an infinite gift, to make their own decisions

You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.