Let no man deceive you. You are responsible.
Quotations - Deceiving the Elect
Quotations - Deceiving the Elect
“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”
- Sinclair Lewis
“God wants free worshippers, and no other kind.”
- George W. Truett
“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
“It's not enough to speak, but speak true.”
- William Shakespeare
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- George Santayana
“To say of what is, that it is not, or of what is not, that it is, is false;
while to say of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not, is true.”
- Aristotle
“Oh, the tangled webs we weave
When we practice to deceive.”
- Sir Walter Scott
“Oh, what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to believe!”
- Laurence J. Peter
“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
- Oscar Wilde
“Whatever is only almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors,
because being so near truth, it is the more likely to lead astray.”
- Henry Ward Beecher
“Truth that has merely been learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thought of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“Despite their putative claims to the faith, the leaders of the religious right are vicious toward anyone who refuses to kowtow to their version of orthodoxy, and their machinery of vilification strikes with ruthless, dispassionate efficiency.”
“Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish.”
- George Grant
“There are three classes of people:
Those who see.
Those who see when they are shown.
Those who do not see.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
“One night while I was sleeping in a prison cell, God gave me another dream, a dramatic vision in which He showed me a picture of the church, the body of Christ. In the dream, the people of the church appeared as cattle being herded along in a line. I was horrified when I saw the sight, for these cattle had no skin! They were a bleeding, raw mass of flesh. As I viewed the pitiful scene, I sensed God speaking to me. 'This is what My leaders have done to My church -- they have skinned them! They are being herded toward destruction by the shepherds; they are hurting and bleeding.'”
- Jim Bakker
“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself;
and when it does not support itself so that its professors
are obliged to call for the help of the civil power,
'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”
- Laurence J. Peter
“The motivating dream of the movement is the restoration of an imagined Christian nation. With a revisionist history that claims the founders never intended to create a secular country and that separation of church and state is a lie fostered by conniving leftists, Christian nationalism rejects the idea of government religious neutrality. The movement argues that the absence of religion in public is itself a religion – the malign faith of secular humanism – that must, in the interest of fairness, be balanced with equal deference to the Bible.”
- Michelle Goldberg
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.”
- John Adams
“Because I happen to be a Christian and I think my religion teaches me that you should
render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.
Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, said that we should build a wall
between the church and state. That wall is being deliberately and ostentatiously, not secretly,
broken down. So, there has been an increasing merger in this country of fundamentalism
on the religious side, fundamentalism on the political side, and the two have come together.”
- Jimmy Carter
“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love -
first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”
- Albert Camus
“When a person cannot deceive himself the chances
are against his being able to deceive other people.”
- Mark Twain
“It would be unbelievable, if history did not record the tragic fact, that men
have gone to war and cut each other’s throats because they could not
agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut.”
- Walter P. Stacy
“Man is not an arithmetical expression; he is a mysterious and puzzling being,
and his nature is extreme and contradictory all through.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
“If you look at the world, you'll be distressed.
If you look within, you'll be depressed.
But if you look at Christ, you'll be at rest!”
- Corrie ten Boom
“It it weren't for Christians, I'd be a Christian.”
- Mahatma Ghandi
“A miracle is an event which creates faith.
That is the purpose and nature of miracles.
Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive:
therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively
than have people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation
not merely for hateful words and actions of bad people
but for the appalling silence of the good people.
Human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability;
it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God,
and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in.
Aim at earth and you get neither.”
- C.S. Lewis
“If all mankind had been righteous and only one man a sinner,
Christ would have come to endure the same cross
for this one man. He so loves every individual.”
- St. Augustine
“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.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”
- Thomas Paine
“How much more forcefully can I say it? The time has come, and it is long overdue,
when Christians and conservatives and all men and women who believe in the
birthright of freedom must rise up and reclaim America for Jesus Christ.”
- D. James Kennedy
“The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent
never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once”
- Rene Descartes
“Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“It is the consistent and insistent contention of our Baptist people,
always and everywhere, that religion must be forever
voluntary and uncoerced.”
- George W. Truett
“Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive
with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.”
- Maimonides
“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”
- Laurence J. Peter
“When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys
a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs.
A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal
when it asserts that God prefers some.”
- Harry A. Blackmun
“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
- James Madison
“It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
“Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don't insult them.”
- Japanese Proverb
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism
because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
- Benito Mussolini
“Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.”
- Albert Einstein
“Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion --
it is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.”
- Billy Graham
“These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre: Once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.”
- Bill Moyers
“He that flatters you more than you desire either has deceived you or wishes to deceive.”
- Italian Proverb
“The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more
we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“The spirit that I have seen may be a devil, and the
devil hath power t'assume a pleasing shape, yea,
and perhaps, Out of my weakness and
my melancholy, As he is very potent with
such spirits, abuses me to damn me.”
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“It is infinite, unique; there are no words, there are no comparisons.
Can one scoop up the sea in a teacup? Those who have known God will
understand me; the others, I find, can neither listen nor understand.
There was a Person with me in that room, directly present to my consciousness --
a Person so real that all my precious life was by comparison a mere
shadow play. And I myself was more alive than I had ever been;
it was like waking from sleep. So intense a life cannot be endured long
by flesh and blood; we must ordinarily take our life watered down,
diluted as it were, by time and space and matter.
My perception of God lasted perhaps half a minute.”
- Joy Davidman
“One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional
is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the
seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress.”
- Bill Moyers
“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances
of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration,
to change opinions, even on important subjects, which
I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”
- Benjamin Franklin
"Christiandom has done away with Christianity
without being quite aware of it."
- Soren Kierkegaard
“Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man,
but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it,
however ingeniously it may be disguised.”
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
“Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose
the man who will get the blame.”
- Laurence J. Peter
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting;
it has been found difficult and left untried.”
- G.K. Chesterton
“The first reaction to truth is hatred.”
- Tertullian
“Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.”
- Oliver Goldsmith
“Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible
with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.”
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
“That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never
denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional
disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.”
- Abraham Lincoln
“If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save
people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words.
I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose
every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.”
- Isaac Asimov
“Learning never exhausts the mind”
- Leonardo da Vinci
“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his
own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Many Christians are unaware of a strong undercurrent in conservative Christianity promoting an American jihad. This movement, often referred to as reconstructionism or dominion theology, argues the United States is a Christian nation with the need to purify itself and dominate the world. Originating with a theologian named Rousas John Rushdoony, this movement works to reconstruct a rigid and harsh religious culture based on 'biblical' principles. Once the United States is purified, it hopes to use military power to conquer the world.”
- Philip Gulley, James Mulholland, If God is Love
“This is our land. This is our world. This is our heritage, and with God's help,
we shall reclaim this nation for Jesus Christ. And no power on earth can stop us.”
- D. James Kennedy
“It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us;
the charms of novelty have the same power”
- Blaise Pascal
“For 2,000 years, at least in the West, Christians are what Jews defined themselves against. Oppressed, victimized, expelled, and slaughtered simply for who they were, Jews had their identity and outsider status reinforced over and over again. They were Other, and the oppressors were Christians.”
- Joshua Waxman
“Judge a tree by its fruit; not from the leaves.”
- Euripides
“To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, He has no experience with it.”
- Greek proverb
“It was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me
because I belonged to no church, and was suspected of being a Deist.”
- Abraham Lincoln
“Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of 'Biblical Law.' Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”
- Frederrick Clarkson
“Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us, as those that are not wholly wrong; as no watches so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.”
- Charles Caleb Colton
“The Cultural Mandate He gave at the beginning of the world, and the Great Commission He gave at the beginning of the Christian era after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; the former at the dawn of creation, the latter at the dawn of the new creation. Man is to subdue the earth and have dominion over all its creatures. This is called 'The Cultural Mandate' because it deals with all culture as we know it. As God's junior partners we are to rule over the earth in His name.”
- D. James Kennedy
“I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort.”
- Spiro T. Agnew
“Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people.”
- Heinrich Heine
“The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft.”
- Michael Crichton
“When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it's not, really, to deceive,
but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody
has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them.”
- Paul Goodman
“Truth never plays false roles of any kind, which is why people are so surprised when meeting it. Everyone must decide whether he wants the uncompromising truth or a counterfeit version of truth. Real wisdom consists of recommending the truth to yourself at every opportunity.”
- Vernon Howard
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal,
or acts to improve the lot of others,
or strikes out against injustice,
he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
- Robert F. Kennedy
“My dear brothers, never forget when you hear the progress of the Enlightenment
praised, that the devil's cleverest ploy is to persuade you he doesn't exist.”
- Charles Baudelaire
“All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.”
- Plato
“Human beings will continue to deceive and overpower one another. Basically, everyone exists in the very nature of suffering, so to abuse or mistreat each other is futile. The foundation of all spiritual practice is love. That you practice this well is my only request.”
- Dalai Lama
“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting 'Jesus Christ,' so that it would read 'A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“It is so stupid of the twentieth century
to have abandoned belief in the devil
when he is the only explanation for it.”
- Ronald Knox
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.
One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive
and healthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
- Clive Staples Lewis
“Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”
- Eric Hoffer
“I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more
regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last
day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction.
Fiction has to make sense.”
- Mark Twain
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived
and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
- John F. Kennedy
“The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.”
- D. James Kennedy
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
- Carl Sagan
“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.”
- Winston Churchill
“A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered,
nor false because spoken magnificently.”
- Saint Augustine
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.”
- Elvis Presley
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.”
- Harry S. Truman
"Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult."
- George Eliot
“The object of the superior man is truth.”
- Confucius
“Reason is the natural order of truth; but
imagination is the organ of meaning.”
- C.S. Lewis
“The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.”
- Ayn Rand
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies."
- Noam Chomsky
"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”
- Albert Einstein
“If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it,
however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man
will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.”
- C.S. Lewis
“It is always the best policy to speak the truth,
unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.”
- Jerome K. Jerome
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost.
As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion
and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government,
our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media,
our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short,
over every aspect and institution of human society.”
- D. James Kennedy
“In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled.”
- Paul Eldridge
“He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it,
without asking who is for it or who is against it.”
- Henry George
“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.”
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."
- Virgina Woolf
“Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When money speaks, the truth is silent.”
- Russian Proverb
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”
- Aldous Huxley
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving
and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life
you will have been all of these.”
- George Washington Carver
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
- Albert Einstein
“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”
- Thomas Cooper
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.”
- Ghandi
“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”
- John Adams
“No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet.”
- C.S. Lewis
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”
- Ghandi
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
- Noam Chomsky
“We like to be deceived.”
- Blaise Pascal
“Many evangelicals are beginning to recognize, almost intuitively, that the wanton abuse of natural resources is fundamentally incompatible with a view of creation as God's handiwork.”
- Randall Balmer
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it,
or who said it, no matter if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense.”
- Buddha
“I am sure that only a Christian-controlled country is going to be able to stand up to the impending threat and avert the approaching disaster that our nation is facing.”
- D. James Kennedy
“Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope.”
- Aristotle
“'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and
narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny.”
- William Archer
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land.
They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened
them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
- Bishop Desmond Tutu
“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”
- George Washington
“A half truth is a whole lie.”
- Yiddish Proverb
“Oh, God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruetly so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to Thee in song, has been a groan of travail.”
- Saint Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, CA. 375
“It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.”
- Laurence J. Peter
_________________________________________________
"In the course of traveling around the country, I have been impressed anew by the pervasiveness of the language of militarism among leaders of the religious right. Patrick Henry College, according to its founding president, Michael Farris, 'is training an army of young people who will lead the nation and shape the culture with biblical values.' Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church, in Ohio, issues swords to those who join his organization, the Center for Moral Clarity, and calls on his followers to 'lock and load' for a 'Holy Ghost invasion.' The Traditional Values Coalition advertises its 'Battle Plan' to take over the federal judiciary. 'I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare,' Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, famously declared about his political tactics in 1997. I wonder how that sounds in the ears of the Prince of Peace."
Your priests violated my law and desecrated my holy things. They can't tell the difference between sacred and secular. They tell people there's no difference between right and wrong. They're contemptuous of my holy Sabbaths, profaning me by trying to pull me down to their level. Your politicians are like wolves prowling and killing and rapaciously taking whatever they want. Your preachers cover up for the politicians by pretending to have received visions and special revelations. They say, "This is what GOD, the Master, says..." when GOD hasn't said so much as one word.
Ezekiel 22:26-28 - The Message
Let no man deceive you. You are responsible.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell
