Religious Zeal Quotes

How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?

We [Puritans] have been reputed a Colony of wild Opinionists, swarmed into a remote wilderness to find elbow-room for our fanatic Doctrines and practices.

I … do swear, in the presence of My Brethren and by the Cross of St. Peter and of our Blessed Lady that I will Aid and Support Our Holy Religion by Destroying the Hereticks and as far as my power & property will Go not one Shall be excepted …

There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

There are a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

Things I've done in the past always make me cringe a bit. When I think back to being a Christian. Proselytising to people, that makes me cringe.

We were watching the movements of tens of thousands of disciplined fanatics [Irish Catholic extremists], abstaining from every excess and indulgence and concentrating every passion and feeling on one single object .

It is unnatural for a Christian not to have an appetite for the impossible.

A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.

When indeed Religion is kindled into enthusiasm, its force like that of other passions is increased by the sympathy of a multitude. But enthusiasm is only a temporary state of Religion, and whilst it lasts will hardly be seen with pleasure at the helm. Even in its coolest state, it has been much oftener a motive to oppression than a restraint from it.

We leaders should leave the tradition that we have become crazy for God.

Nothing hath wrought more prejudice to religion, or brought more disparagement upon truth, than boisterous and unseasonable zeal.

We therefore, desiring, as is our duty, to remove all impediments by which in any way the said inquisitors are hindered in the exercise of their office, and to prevent the taint of heretical pravity and of other like evils from spreading their infection to the ruin of others who are innocent, the zeal of religion especially impelling us, in order that the provinces, cities, dioceses, territories, and places aforesaid in the said parts of upper Germany may not be deprived of the office of inquisition which is their due, do hereby decree, by virtue of our apostolic authority, that it shall be permitted to the said inquisitors in these regions to exercise their office of inquisition and to proceed to the correction, imprisonment, and punishment of the aforesaid persons for their said offences and crimes …

The Pilgrims were unified by their religious zeal, but they couldn't fish, they didn't know how to hunt, and they were bad at farming. In fact, they never had a good harvest until they learned to fish cod and plow the waste in the ground as fertilizer.

There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.

There have been men before who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself, as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

Beware of the guy praying loudest in the amen corner.

Some ministers would make good martyrs: they are so dry they would burn well.

I am a bit odd. I am somewhat evangelical. But I am not crazy.

War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and overzealous piety.

The fear of Hell, or aiming to be blest, Savors too much of private interest. This moved not Moses, nor the zealous Paul, Who for their friends abandoned soul and all.

Would we Read, in the ancient Histories, how zealous the more discreet Pagans were to maintain Schools among them; it might put us Christians to the Blush, among whom 'tis common for Schools to starve and sink;