Holy Wars Quotes

... the doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

We don't need holy wars. What we need is tolerance and brotherhood and simple humanity. ~ Arlen Specter

In the Islamic tradition a distinction is made between two holy wars, the "greater holy war" (el-jihadul-akbar) and the "lesser holy war" (el-jihadul-ashgar). This distinction originated from a saying (hadith) of the Prophet, who on the way back from a military expedition said: "You have returned from a lesser holy war to a great holy war." The greater holy war is of an inner and spiritual nature; the other is the material war waged externally against an enemy population with the particular intent of bringing "infidel" populations under the rule of "God's Law" (al-Islam). The relationship between the "greater" and "lesser holy war", however, mirrors the relationship between the soul and the body; in order to understand the heroic asceticism or "path of action", it is necessary to understand the situation in which the two paths merge, the "lesser holy war" becoming the means through which a "greater holy war" is carried out, and vice versa: the "little holy war", or the external one, becomes almost a ritual action that expresses and gives witness to the reality of the first. Originally, orthodox Islam conceived of a unitary form of asceticism: that which is connected to the jihad or "holy war". ~ Julius Evola

Yam raised an army of sea creatures designed to march on Mount Aqraa, to destroy Baal. He created some of the craziest monstrosities every seen: lobsters rode four-legged tuna like proud cavalry, sword fish infantry marched onward in perfect step, biped whales thundered towards the mountain, while winged sharks provided air support. An elite group of electric eel assassins were armed with both their innate ability to shock in melee combat and throwing star fish for long range skirmishes. ~ Dylan Callens

Be assured, a God who spoke the universe into existence would not need grains of dust to fight holy wars for him. ~ Christina Engela

That both Muslim fundamentalists and the Christian right are today focusing their attempts to regain control in a rapidly changing world on frantic efforts to maintain control over women, particularly over women's sexuality. Moreover, given their mythologies about "holy wars," it is also understandable that they should use "divinely approved" violence to do so ... ~ Riane Eisler

When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases. ~ Erik Erikson

Nations like the Cuban and the Swiss
Can never hope to wage a Global Mission.
No Holy Wars for them. The most the small
Can ever give us is a nuisance brawl. ~ Robert Frost

Scientists are dedicated to asking questions in the search for truth. But they too are human, and like all humans, they would like their answers to be clean and clear and easy. In their desire for simple solutions, scientists are prone to fall into two traps as they question the reality of God. The first is to throw the baby out with the bath water. And the second is tunnel vision. There is clearly a lot of dirty bath water surrounding the reality of God. Holy wars. Inquisitions. Animal sacrifice. Human sacrifice. Superstition. Stultification. Dogmatism. Ignorance. Hypocrisy. Self-righteousness. Rigidity. Cruelty. Book-burning. Witch-burning. Inhibition. Fear. Conformity. Morbid guilt. Insanity. The list is almost endless. But is all this what God has done to humans or what humans have done to God? It is abundantly evident that belief in God is often destructively dogmatic. Is the problem, then, that humans tend to believe in God, or is the problem that humans tend to be dogmatic? ~ M. Scott Peck

The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people. ~ Aldous Huxley

It's one thing to make war for your country, your family, even in pursuit of glory. It's another to believe that the people you fight are embodiments of evil and must be destroyed for that. I want this peninsula back. I want Esperana great again, but I will not pretend that if we smash Al- Rassan and all it has built we are doing the will of any god I know. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need. ~ Anne McCaffrey

Saying of the Prophet
Truth
Speaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars. ~ Idries Shah

Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. ~ Karen Armstrong

[Those who accept] the Americanized, Constantinian paradigm [say:] We are of God; they are of the Devil. We are the light; they are the darkness. Our wars are therefore "holy" wars. With all due respect, this is blatant idolatry. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.
There can be no 'chosen people' in the Atheist philosophy.
There are no bended knees in Atheism;
No supplications, no prayers;
No sacrificial redemptions;
No 'divine' revelations;
No washing in the blood of the lamb;
No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;
No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;
No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;
No christs, and no saviors;
No devils, no ghosts and no gods. ~ Joseph Lewis

Let us search into the records of Holy Writ, if out of this their great charter, there be not a seal grant of a lesser, though like privilege, and this by virtue of Christ, in that we have the honour to be accounted Abraham's seed as truly as they. ~ Thomas Goodwin

Fervency in prayer by the power of the Holy Spirit is a good preservative against thoughts rushing in. Flies never settle on the boiling pot. ~ Dwight L. Moody

When you pray regularly, you never know when God will show up or speak up. Today could be the day. When you live in prayer mode, you live with holy anticipation. You know that coincidences are providences. Any moment can turn into a holy moment. God can invade the reality of your life at three o'clock one afternoon and change everything. ~ Mark Batterson

Though our holy religion teaches us to be for peace, yet it does not forbid us to provide for war. ~ Matthew Henry

"Star Wars" was the right movie for me. I watched the MSE-6 droid leading the stormtroopers where they needed to go when they were under attack, and that got my attention much more so than C-3PO and R2-D2 because we could actually build that. ~ Colin Angle

It has been a privilege beyond belief for me to have represented the State of Louisiana in Congress and to have been given the blessed assignment of U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. ~ Lindy Boggs

Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday ... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side ... in the great ideological wars of our time. ~ Isaiah Berlin

The Holy ... Machine?" I mumbled.
"Yes." She gave a little laugh. "A great miracle. He is a kind of robot, but God has given him a soul - and not an ordinary human soul either, but the soul of a saint or an angel!"
"But ... I thought robots were ... bad ... "
"Yes, of course, and Mary Magdalene was a whore. To God, all things are possible. ~ Chris Beckett

A letter from 15 year old Sophia - later Catherine the Great - to her father:
My Lord: I beg you to assure yourself that your advice and exhortation will remain forever engraved on my heart, as the seeds of the holy faith will in my soul, to which I pray God to lend all the strength it will need to sustain me through the temptations to which I expect to be exposed... I hope to have the consolation of being worthy of it, and likewise of continuing to receive good news of my dear Papa, and I am, as long as I live, and in an inviolable respect, my lord, your Highness's most humble, most obedient, and faithful daughter and servant, Sophia. ~ Robert Massie

Cash smiles at them and then turns to face me, leaning forward a little on the bar. His eyes meet mine and one brow rises in that holy mother of hell-sexy way, then he mutters, "You've got one chance to make my mouth water."
I suck in a breath. And chills break out down my arms.
Damn, he's good! ~ M. Leighton

Faith is a luxury for those who are able to ignore what the rest of us must see every day. Pessimism, distrust, and irony are the holy trinity of my religion, irony in particular. ~ Brando Skyhorse

You are speaking of something sacred, something holy. Love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast. It casts out pride, selfishness and anger. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres and never fails. ~ Carol Devine

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die. ~ Salvador Dali

Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body. ~ Plato

I know that I am a part of something so tremendous, so great, that, if for this reason only, it is holy. ~ Lawrence LeShan

Those who start wars never fight them, and those who fight wars never like them. ~ Michael Franti

Probably in all our history no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese. Emotions forgotten since our most savage Indian wars were reawakened. ~ Allen Nevins

The Holy Land is everywhere ~ Black Elk

I," she [the Holy Spirit] opened her hands to include Jesus and Papa, "I am a verb. I am that I am. I will be who I will be. I am a verb! I am alive, dynamic, ever active and moving. I am a being verb. And as my very essence is a verb, I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs such as confessing, repenting, living, loving, responding, growing, reaping, changing, sowing, running, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning it into a dead noun or principle that reeks of rules. Nouns exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless 'I am' there are no verbs and verbs are what makes the universe alive. ~ Wm. Paul Young

Rock and roll cola wars, I can't take it any more. ~ Billy Joel

People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business. ~ George Gissing

Unless men may come to a reasonable, solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel, by the internal evidences of it, ... by a sight of its glory; it is impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history, should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all. They may without this, see a great deal of probability of it; it may be reasonable for them to give much credit to what learned men and historians tell them ... But to have a conviction, so clear, and evident, and assuring, as to be sufficient to induce them, with boldness to sell all, confidently and fearlessly to run the venture of the loss of all things, and of enduring the most exquisite and long continued torments, and to trample the world under foot, and count all things but dung for Christ, the evidence they can have from history, cannot be sufficient. ~ Jonathan Edwards

The gunslinger occasionally moaned with the wind. The stars were as indifferent to this as they were to wars, crucifixions, resurrections. ~ Stephen King

Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word with boldness. Even when threatened with punishment, he said that he could not help but share the things he had seen and heard. ~ David Jeremiah

Wars are always madness: all is lost in war, all is to be gained in peace. ~ Pope Francis

In his book, Holy Spirit, Revelation and Revolution: Exploring Holy Spirit Dimensions, Reinhard Bonnke says: "Prayer is not enough to rouse a dead church. It needs the power of the Word imbued with the life of the Spirit. Life comes from the living Word. What we can do and what we should do is preach the Word. Praying for God to work is fine, but praying for Him to do what we should be doing is pointless. We cannot send his Spirit anywhere. He moves with us, and He is where we are. We cannot pray for God to save souls and bless people and then wait for something to happen. He sends us with the Word and the Spirit awaits us. It is our privilege to work for him, save souls for him. For anyone who thinks they do not have strength or power, the Word is their strength and their power. There are two important things to note: Holy Spirit meetings without the Word are human meetings, and prayer is not a substitute for the Word." 1 ~ Steve Bremner

There is, for instance, only one page at the beginning of Runciman's three-volume History of the Crusades describing how the participants decided to begin four hundred years of wars, and then several thousand pages devoted to the routes, battles and other events which make up the "history" of the Crusades. ~ Lloyd DeMause

Punctuation! We knew it was holy. Every sentence we cherished was sturdy and Biblical in its form, carved somehow by hand-dragged implement or slapped onto sheets by an inky key. For sentences were sculptural, were we the only ones who understood? Sentences were bodies, too, as horny as the flesh-envelopes we wore around the house all day. Erotically enjambed in our loft bed, Clea patrolled my utterances for subject, verb, predicate, as a chef in a five-star kitchen would minister a recipe, insuring that a soufflé or sourdough would rise. A good brave sentence ("I can hardly bear your heel at my nape without roaring") might jolly Clea to instant climax. We'd rise from the bed giggling, clutching for glasses of cold water that sat in pools of their own sweat on bedside tables. The sentences had liberated our higher orgasms, nothing to sneeze at. Similarly, we were also sure that sentences of the right quality could end this hideous endless war, if only certain standards were adopted at the higher levels. They never would be. All the media trumpeted the Administration's lousy grammar. ~ Jonathan Lethem

The greatest events that have been spoken of by all the Holy Prophets will come along so naturally as the consequences of certain causes, that unless our eyes are enlightened by the Spirit of God, and the spirit of revelation rests upon us, we will fail to see that these are the events predicted by the Holy Prophets. ~ George Q. Cannon

In the wars it had been different. Men dropped from the columns all the time on the long marches, in the cold months. First they fell to the back, then they fell behind, then they fell over. The cold, the sick, the wounded. Logen shivered and hunched his shoulders. At first he'd tried to help them. Then he became grateful he wasn't one of them. Then he stepped over the corpses and hardly noticed them. You learn to tell when someone isn't getting up again. He looked at Malacus Quai. One more death in the wild was nothing to remark upon. You have to be realistic, after all.

The apprentice started from his fitful sleep and tried to push himself up. His hands were shaking bad. He looked up at Logen, eyes glittering bright. "I can't get up," he croaked.

"I know. I'm surprised you made it this far." It didn't matter so much now. Logen knew the way. If he could find that track he might make twenty miles a day.

"If you leave me some of the food… perhaps… after you get to the library… someone…"

"No," said Logen, setting his jaw. "I need the food."

Quai made a strange sound, somewhere between a cough and a sob.

Logen leaned down and set his right shoulder in Quai's stomach, pushed his arm under his back. "I can't carry you forty miles without it. ~ Joe Abercrombie

My friends and family are not really fixated on the specifics of 'Star Wars.' My parents don't know anything about 'Star Wars.' They've never watched a 'Star Wars' film. ~ John Boyega

Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy. ~ Gerhard Richter

In the West, anything that must be hidden is suspect; availability and honesty are interlinked. This clashes irreconcilably with Islam, where the things that are most precious, most perfect and most holy are always hidden: the Kaaba, the faces of prophets and angels, a woman's body, Heaven. ~ G. Willow Wilson