Creeds Quotes

There are many in the Church as well as out of it who need to learn that Christianity is neither creed nor a ceremonial, but a life vitaly connected with a loving Christ. ~ Josiah Strong

It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. ~ Eric Hoffer

The Working Man's Creed: "A short day is better than a short dollar"
. ~ William McKinley

The ultimate Truth is so simple. It is nothing more than being in the pristine state. This is all that need be said. till, it is a wonder that to teach this simple Truth there should come into being so many religions, creeds, methods and disputes among them and so on! Oh the pity! Oh the pity! ~ Ramana Maharshi

The moment you think creed and form and ceremony the "be-all" and "end-all", then you are in bondage. Take part in them to help others, but take care they do not become a bondage. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have a personal interest in their survival ... all thought the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

When the time of danger comes, all Americans, whatever their social standing, whatever their creed, whatever the training they have received, no matter from what section of the country they have come, stand together as men, as Americans, and are content to face the same fate and do the same duties because fundamentally they all alike have the common purpose to serve the glorious flag of their common country. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Well they were going to have to do a whole lot better than this if they wanted us Creeds to feel bad. If they thought they could hurt me or dad just by messing with my head at a tryout and cutting me from the team they had another thing coming. If there is one thing we Creeds knew how to succeed at, it was failure. ~ Perry Moore

An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo is the classical text-book instance. ~ T.E. Lawrence

It is better to study how to live rather than how to die; ... it is better to have a religion of deeds rather than a religion of creeds; ... it is better to work for humanity than for God. ~ Voltairine De Cleyre

Women will not simply be mainstreamed into the polluted stream. Women are changing the stream, making it clean and green and safe for all - every gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, age, and ability. ~ Bella Abzug

There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Any theory, hypothesis, philosophy, sect, creed or institution that fears investigation, openly manifests its own error. ~ Andrew Jackson Davis

Seek the underlying harmonies of love and the overarching rainbow of hope, rather than the surface distinctions of creeds and of sects. Work for peace in religion. ~ Jenkin Lloyd Jones

World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds ~ Mary McLeod Bethune

Doubt that creed which you cannot reduce to practice. ~ Hosea Ballou

A man got up [after one of Huxley's 'sermons'] and said 'they had never heard anything like that in Norwich before'. Never 'did Science seem so vast and mere creeds so little'. ~ Adrian Desmond

I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently ... This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten. ~ Anita Roddick

I move for a creed for all our denominations made out of Scripture quotations, pure and simple. That would be impregnable against infidelity and Appolyonic assault. That would be beyond human criticism. Let us make it simpler and plainer for people to get into the Kingdom of God. ~ Thomas De Witt Talmage

The Church was resolved to have a New Testament, and as, after the lapse of more than three hundred years, no handwriting could be proved or disproved, the Church, which like former impostors had then gotten possession of the State, had everything its own way. It invented creeds, such as that called the Apostle's Creed, the Nicean Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and out of the loads of rubbish that were presented it voted four to be Gospels, and others to be Epistles, as we now find them arranged. ~ Thomas Paine

I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

[The Truth Seeker is] Devoted to: science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform, progression, free education and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race.
Opposed to: priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, dogmas, creeds, false theology, superstition, bigotry, ignorance, monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, tyranny, oppression, and everything that degrades or burdens mankind mentally or physically. ~ De Robigne Mortimer Bennett

The Democratic Party is the party that opened its arms. We opened them to every nationality, every creed. We opened them to the immigrants. The Democratic Party is the party of the people. ~ Richard J. Daley

As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds. And his gods they are shaped in his image and mirror his needs. And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, He clothes them with music and fire, Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, That he worships his own desire. ~ Don Marquis

The prevention of free inquiry is unavoidable so long as the purpose of education is to produce belief rather than thought, to compel the young to hold positive opinions on doubtful matters rather than to let them see the doubtfulness and be encouraged to independence of mind. Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth. ~ Anonymous

All things change, creeds and philosophies and outward systems - but God remains. ~ Mary Augusta Ward

As soon as any one belongs to a narrow creed in science, every unprejudiced and true perception is gone. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is a curious thing ... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world. ~ Helen Keller

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. ~ Bertrand Russell

Either you can subscribe to the American creed which says that God endowed us with our rights, or you can subscribe to the abortion creed which says that those rights are the consequences of our mother's will. ~ Alan Keyes

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world. ~ Ansel Adams

Love's creed is separate from all religions. ~ Rumi

Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine. ~ Elizabeth Janeway

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Creeds are definitions of what it means to be a Christian. They are fences that, albeit imperfectly, seek to separate sheep from goats. ~ R.C. Sproul Jr.

As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated. ~ A. N. Wilson

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like. ~ Walter Benjamin

And did not the degeneration of religion begin with reason itself? As Santayana says, the process of degeneration of religion was due to too much reasoning: "This religion unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become superstition overlaid with reasoning." The decay of religion is due to the pedantic spirit, in the invention of creeds, formulas, articles of faith, doctrines and apologies. We become increasingly less pious as we increasingly justify and rationalize our beliefs and become so sure that we are right. ~ Lin Yutang

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. ~ G.K. Chesterton

...But besides the danger of a direct mixture of Religion & civil Government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded agst in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations.

...Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.

...Better also to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect ~ James Madison

While other creeds endeavor to get us out of the world and into heaven, in Christianity, heaven comes down and Christ comes into this world to get us. To suffer with us. We find favor - only because Christ feels pain. ~ Ann Voskamp

Creed's sound is my sound. ~ Scott Stapp

Her keyboard. "There," she said eventually. "Bringing up real-time scan." The display changed to a zoomed-in view of the Animus penetration around the object, as several of the tendrils of the black fluid crept toward it. Creed's eyes widened as just a moment later he saw the Animus shrink away from the object. It was impossible to say whether it had been driven back or had recoiled voluntarily, but the reason was at least clear why this tiny part of Malpense's brain had remained free of Animus. Unfortunately, it left them no closer to understanding what the object was. That would require an invasive, ~ Mark Walden

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. ~ Walter Bagehot

The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round. ~ Bertrand Russell

Hinduism does not rest on the authority of one book or one prophet, nor does it posses a common creed like the Kalma. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Today it is the Western democratic tradition that attracts and empowers people of all continents, creeds, and colors. When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square, they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism. ~ Dan Barker

Human kindness is deeply subversive to totalitarian creeds, which seek to thwart all compassion toward those deemed unworthy of moral consideration, those branded as internal or external enemies. ~ Chris Hedges

Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed. ~ Thomas Jefferson

For the first time in his life, Midhat wished he were more religious. Of course he prayed, but though that was a private mechanism it sometimes felt like a public act, and the lessons of the Quran were lessons by rote, one was steeped in them, hearing them so often. They were the texture of his world, and yet they did not occupy that central, vital part of his mind, the part that was vibrating at this moment, on this train, rattling forward while he struggled to hold all these pieces. As a child he had felt some of the same curiosity he held for the mysteries of other creeds - for Christianity with its holy fire, the Samaritans with their alphabets - but that feeling had dulled while he was still young, when traditional religion began to seem a worldly thing, a realm of morals and laws and the same old stories and holidays. They were acts, not thoughts. He faced the water now along the coast, steadying his gaze on the slow distance, beyond the blur of trees pushing past the tracks, on the desolate fishing boats hobbling over the waves. He sensed himself tracing the lip of something very large, something black and well-like, a vessel which was at the same time an emptiness, and he thought, without thinking precisely, only feeling with the tender edges of his mind, what the Revelation might have been for in its origin. Why it was so important that they could argue to the sword what it meant if God had hands, and whether He had made the universe. Underneath it all was a living u ~ Isabella Hammad

They say: Belief is important. I say: No, actions are important. Judge by deed, not by creed. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

All creeds and opinions are nothing but the mere result of chance and temperament. ~ Joseph Henry

I think it's a good idea to take samples and live with them a little. So far I'm liking Creed's Spring Flower. I think I'm going to make it my regular scent. ~ Isabelle Fuhrman

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Men and women existed before creeds; love is the only religion. ~ Rosa Campbell Praed

There is no god and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law or permanent moral absolutes. ~ John Dewey

The world has a thousand creeds, and never a one have I;
Nor a church of my own, though a million spires are pointing the way on high.
But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me along like a river;
And the lamp of my soul is alight with love, for life, and the world, and the Giver. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Athanasian Creed is the most splendid ecclesiastical lyric ever poured forth by the genius of man. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

I was struck, as always, that a heathen poet from long ago should know so much of the human heart, and how little that heart changes, though great cities fall and new dispensations sweep away the old and pagan creeds. ~ Geraldine Brooks

CoMasonry, in that it admits women, is something different, something distinct from the other Masonic bodies," said the January 1913 edition of Universal CoMasonry.240 "It has not been organized and is not maintained in America to compete with any of them, to condemn or fight any of them, but to fill a role of its own and that is to bring together in one organization men and women of all nationalities and races, of all creeds and political beliefs and have them, through the greatest of all Masonic virtues, TOLERANCE, work in peace and harmony to hasten the day when Universal Brotherhood shall be a reality, understood and lived. ~ Karen Kidd

It is a deplorable fact that many Christians are so accustomed to a certain creed and dogma of their own that they will adhere to it even at the sacrifice of the great moral laws of love and mercy. ~ Ed Buckner

The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political , were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact , and therefore did not look for new foundations. ~ John Buchan

This is because Marxism looks at things as a whole and in relation to each other - or tries to, but its limitations are not the point for the moment. A person who has been influenced by Marxism takes it for granted that an event in Siberia will affect one in Botswana. I think it is possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time [written in 1971], outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects and creeds. But it was an attempt. ~ Doris Lessing

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive. ~ James Anthony Froude

The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions. ~ George Eliot

An America that is militarily and economically strong is not enough. The world must see an America that is morally strong with a creed and a vision. This is what has led us to dare and achieve. For us, values count. Speech, New York City, December 12, 1983 ~ Ronald Reagan

The great creeds of the Church are (like) the operational hypotheses in his (physics) laboratory - the best we've been able to articulate up to now, but also not the last word. Both the scientist and the mystic live boldly with the discoveries they have made, all the while anticipating better discoveries to come. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ~ Krista Tippett

'I have chosen you!' Keep that note of greatness in your creed. It is not that you have got God but that He has got you. ~ Oswald Chambers

Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

When people call for "deeds, not creeds," asking, "What Would Jesus Do?" without much interest in the query, "What has Jesus done?" identifying themselves as "spiritual but not religious," they are asking for the law without the gospel. ~ Michael S. Horton

We can not understand each other, if every time we venture out we stick the feather of cocksureness in our caps. No, we can never wholly understand each other, and rise to the level of mutual esteem at least, if we do not invest in that fellow feeling that triumphs over class and creed and race and color. ~ Ameen Rihani

My problems were not what ended Creed. ~ Scott Stapp

I believe our way of life is infinitely superior for every human being than any which the Communist creed can offer. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

From the death of the old the new proceeds, and the life of truth from the death of creeds. ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

There are no holy atheist scriptures, no atheist pope and no atheist rituals, tenets, creeds, code or authority. Atheism cannot be held accountable for the activities of atheists in the same way that religion can be judged by its doctrine because atheism has no doctrines. ~ Armin Navabi

I'd fired anyone who was involved with Creed. I didn't want anything to do with the music business. The entire press and industry hated me, so what was the point? ~ Scott Stapp

Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Only those elements time cannot wear: The Angels, the Empyrean, and the First Matter are the elements time cannot wear, for they will last to all time. Man, however, in his mortal state, is not eternal. The Gate of Hell, therefore, was created before man. The theological point is worth attention. The doctrine of Original Sin is, of course, one familiar to many creeds. Here, however, it would seem that the preparation for damnation predates Original Sin. True, in one interpretation. Hell was created for the punishment of the Rebellious Angels and not for man. Had man not sinned, he would never have known Hell. But on the other hand, Dante's God was one who knew all, and knew therefore that man would indeed sin. The theological problem is an extremely delicate one. ~ Dante Alighieri

The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy. ~ Adolf Hitler

The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. ~ T.E. Lawrence

The way of even the most justifiable revolution is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds. The Professor's indignation found in itself a final cause that absolued him from the sin of turning to destruction as the agent of his ambition. To destroy public faith in legality was the imperfect formula of his pedantic fanaticism; but the subconscious conviction that the framework of an established social order cannot be effectually shattered except by some form of collective or individual violence was precise and correct. He was a moral agent -- that was settled in his mind. By exercising his agency with ruthless defiance he procurred for himself the appearances of power and personal prestige, that was undeniable to his vengeful bitterness. It pacified its unrest; and in their own way the most ardent of revolutionaries are perhaps doing no more but seeking for peace in common with the rest of mankind -- the peace of soothed vanity, of satisfied appetites, or perhaps of appeased conscience. ~ Joseph Conrad

The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

The existing confusion of conflicting creeds and sects is fitly represented by the term "Babylon," which prophecy (Revelation 14:8) applies to the world-loving churches of the last days. ~ Ellen G. White

Creeds are not straitjackets, but guardrails that keep us safe. ~ Stephen Nichols

True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess. ~ Louis Nizer

When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word, we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don't quite fit our preferences and presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible's cacophony of voices into a single tone and turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God. ~ Oswald Chambers

Paganism has no fixed creeds or dogmas, no self-proclaimed gurus or prophets, no holy books or saviours. Earth Herself is our teacher. Pagans, like all, natural peoples, desire to live in harmony with
Earth and see all Her manifestations, whether animal, plant, insect, rock or mountain, or, as Native Americans say, four-legged, two-legged, crawling and flying, as our relations and as ensouled. ~ Monica Sjöö

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.


He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length


To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone, ~ Alfred Tennyson

A great deal about what Jesus did between the time of his birth and the time of his death. In particular, they tell us about what we might call his kingdom-inaugurating work: the deeds and words that declared that God's kingdom was coming then and there, in some sense or other, on earth as in heaven. They tell us a great deal about that; but the great creeds don't. ~ N. T. Wright

The idea of brotherhood re-dawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed. ~ Helen Keller

Sekts and creeds ov religion, are like pocket compesses, good enuff tu pinte out the direction, but the nearer the pole yu git thewuss tha wurk. ~ Josh Billings