Lester Frank Ward Quotes

I was raised in the church.

I'm a reverend and a pastor. A pastor of the church. I go by usually pastor.

I grew up in the church, and I feel very strongly about it.

But I like going to church. If you've been brought up in the Church of England, it feels like visiting an elderly relative. And I think it's important that part of the kids' education is knowing about the Bible.

In fact, my parents were church people; my father was a deacon in the church.

I am a pastor so I eat and breathe the Church.

Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.

I don't know any institution in this country that... carries more influence than the church.

The public schools have indeed been the most powerful single engine of subversion that our enemies have used upon us.

The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.

The movement for the democratic idea inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and administered schools.

I literally grew up in the church.

There's no distinction. A teacher is a preacher. The teachers in public schools are preachers, and the preachers in church are teachers.

My father was a minister, so I was raised in the church.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

Artists... disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church.

The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.

It seems particularly ironic that a church that at one stage, a long time ago, fought to redefine marriage should now be so opposed to these attempts to redefine marriage.

Modernity is not about dress codes.

No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is long and - like the glacier march - is perceptible only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods.

What interests me is to understand the nature of the modern.

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders.

Western Civilization has been in a state of decline since the Edwardian age, say 1910. That was the height of Greco-Roman European civilization. Then there was the First World War. That was the beginning of the end. That civilization has been in a decline ever since. But from the American triumphalist point of view our wonderful electronic revolution is really the forefront of an ongoing wonderful civilization.

All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.