Reformation Quotes

God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. (William Wilberforce)
I never revolted in vain, as a rebel or as a tyrant, but I rose seeking reformation for the nation of my grandfather Muhammad. I intend to enjoin good and forbid evil, to act according to the traditions of my grandfather, and my father ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib. View quote
Husayn ibn Ali
About the scientific revolution: it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes". View quote
Herbert Butterfield
Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
They waste life in what are called good resolutions-partial efforts at reformation, feebly commenced, heartlessly conducted, and hopelessly concluded. View quote
Charles Maturin
How can we still speak of the salvation and reformation of Europe, when we have to ask Europe's destroyer for help? View quote
Alfred Rosenberg
The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost. View quote
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action. View quote
George Gillespie
I'd like to write a history, maybe of the Reformation. View quote
Jane Haddam
The Reformation did not directly touch the question of the true character of God's church. View quote
John Nelson Darby
A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah. (Julius Wellhausen)
And finally, it was Deuteronomy that brought about the historical result of Josiah's reformation. View quote
Julius Wellhausen
As the power of Christianity declined through the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinism played a less and less important part, while the new philosophies of mechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased. View quote
Ralph Adams Cram
Thinking that morality is all about commandments is a relatively new way of thinking, since the Reformation. View quote
Timothy Radcliffe
Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
The spread of this version, imperfect as it was, proves the hunger and thirst of the German people for the pure word of God, and prepared the way for the Reformation. It alarmed the hierarchy. Archbishop Berthold of Mainz, otherwise a learned and enlightened prelate, issued, Jan. 4, 1486, a prohibition of all unauthorized printing of sacred and learned books, especially the German Bible, within his diocese, giving as a reason that the German language was incapable of correctly rendering the profound sense of Greek and Latin works, and that laymen and women could not understand the Bible. Even Geiler of Kaisersberg, who sharply criticised the follies of the world and abuses of the Church, thought it "an evil thing to print the Bible in German." View quote
Philip Schaff
The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate [a free inquiry]? The blackest billingsgate, most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. View quote
John Adams
Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came, under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with all these Divine precepts? Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would we think it just?-One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more than Reason, or the Bible. View quote
Thomas Paine
We have to be on our guard when the whig historian tells us... that the Reformation is justified because it ultimately led to liberty... for it is possible to argue against the whig historian that the ultimate issue which he applauds only came in the long run from the fact that, in its immediate results, The Reformation was disastrous to liberty. View quote
Herbert Butterfield
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
I am now convinced that the Reformation of the church will come from the east. In the west there is no spiritual life. (I'm speaking of the Protestant church and not the Roman Catholic church.) We have civilisation and we try to keep up culture, but we have no spiritual life. The east has a spiritual life. They know that colour influences the spirit more than black lines. In Russia there is still the notion that art is nearer religion than thinking in lines and logic. All abstract rationalising needs to be filled out with sensual thinking and feelings. In Russia there is still a strong impression of colour. (Martin Niemöller)
Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years. View quote
Henry Ward Beecher
Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. View quote
Edmund Burke
You can make yourself feel better about yourself if you project your shadow side, if you project your own potential for evil onto someone else. By annihilating them and, therefore, your shadow, you bring yourself into some state of purity or reformation. View quote
Jennifer Beals
I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the soul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution - learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the spiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark Ages. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was the offering of the Middle Ages. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno