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Infallibility Quotes

Browse 85 quotes about Infallibility.

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Infallibility Quotes

“Van Gogh's view of the world becomes a lamp that reveals corners of my heart that I didn't know were there- and all of this happens immediately, even though he died 88 years before I was born. So ask yourself this: Is The Starry Night infallible? The questions doesn't make sense. Though grammatically sound, it is a query with no meaning. I could just as easily ask "How much does a sunset weigh?" The beauty of The Starry Night isn't in it being fallible or infallible. It's a window into another person's soul. Let's try another question: Is The Starry Night true? If we're talking logic or math, this question is as nonsensical as the first. But if we ask with the perspective of an artist or philosopher, we might find that, yes, The Starry Night is very true- it tells us truths about the human experience. It's a testament to how grief feels and the numinous quality we often experience when we peer deeply into the night sky... It is somehow more true than facts- it resonates in some deeper chamber of the human heart. So let me ask you two more questions: Is the Bible infallible? Is it true?”

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Book:Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science
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“The doctrine of the divine authority of Holy Scripture constitutes an important component in the words of God that Jesus preached, and if he was mistaken on this point he was wrong at a point that is most closely tied in with the religious life and he can no longer be recognized as our highest prophet. We cannot take Jesus seriously as a teacher and reject his own teaching concerning Holy Scripture.”

InspirationJesusChristianityBibleScriptureInfallibilityInerrancyBiblical Authority
Book:Reformed Dogmatics
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“When interpreted as infallible, the truth claims of powerful institutions — whether religious or secular — tend to emphasise the fallibility of individuals and their subjective ethical intuitions; thus, undermining self-reliance, including people’s ability to make use of information they intuitively know is basically correct, based on their own experiences or simply common sense.”

TruthCommon SenseInfallibilityEthical Intuition
Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
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“The management has exploited our wish for infallible systems: here is the water, there is the land, no one can make a mistake. Up to this line there is no danger; on the other side of the line waits certain death. Therefore the alarm wails and the guests flee from their rooms with their clothes fluttering around them. The illusion of complete safety so long as the margin is not reached bears the reverse implication of complete panic once the margin is exceeded. It is easier to choose these sharp demarcation lines than uncertainty in our individual situation; the adjustment has been so small that in itself it is not disastrous, but could contribute to disaster.”

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Book:Termush
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“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?”

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Book:Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays
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“There is no excuse for anyone in taking the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that all our expositions of scripture are without an error. The fact that certain doctrines have been held as truth for many years by our people is not a proof that our ideas are infallible. Age will not make an error into truth, and truth can be fair. No true doctrine will lose anything by close investigation”

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Book:Counsels to Writers and Editors
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“Every interview with a public figure should include the question "What have you been wrong about, and how did that change your views?" The answer will tell us if the person is intellectually honest or a tale spinner with delusions of infallibility.”

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Book:Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, RestoredWildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary
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“The significant contribution of empiricism was not the eradication of certainty, but the eradication of infallibility as a criterion of certainty. And this shift from infallibilism to fallibilism has profound consequences not only for toleration, but also for the subordination of faith to reason and theology to philosophy.”

ReasonPhilosophyAtheismConsequenceProfoundPositive AtheismSignificantTheologyCertaintyContributionCriteriaTolerationEmpiricismSubordinationInfallibility
Book:Why Atheism?
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“Self-righteousness and presumptive moral judgments pose a great danger in the political arena. To become convinced of the divine infallibility of one's personal predilections on a secular political issue is to play God, to assume to oneself the attributes of deity. It cultivates an arrogant intolerance of dissenting viewpoints and relegates one's political adversaries to the category of evil per se.”

SelfPlayPoliticalEvilMoralIssuesAtheismDangerDivineJudgmentAssumingOneselfPositive AtheismConvincedRighteousnessCategoriesAttributesArrogantIntoleranceSecularArenaDeitiesAdversariesViewpointsSelf RighteousnessInfallibilityPolitical IssuesMoral Judgment
Author:Jim Wright
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“Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience-that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible-that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”

GivingMindFirstsMeanMadeFactsAcceptingBecomingTenLimitsAuthorityCapacityErrorsAcceptedDeep ThoughtAutonomyExpandingZombieLearning From MistakesInfallibleMindlessCorrectingWise WomenRedeemingOmniscientFallibilityInfallibilityOmniscience
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long- range future of anyone.”

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Book:Resurrection: myth or reality? : a bishop's search for the origins of Christianity
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“All the ideals and beliefs you ever had have crashed about your gun-deafened ears - you don't believe in God or them or the infallibility of England or anything but bloody war and wounds and foul smells and smutty stories and smoke and bombs and lice and filth and noise, noise, noise - you live in a world of cold sick fear, a dirty world of darkness and despair - you want to crawl ignominiously home away from these painful writhing things that once were men, these shattered, tortured faces that dumbly demand what it's all about in Christ's name.”

MenWorldWantBelieveWarStoriesHomeFacesNamesBeliefChristDarknessColdDemandDespairGunIdealsEarsSickEnglandDon't BelievePainfulSmellWoundsNoiseSmokeDirtyBombsBelieve In GodBloodyFoulShatteredFilthInfallibilityLiceDirty World
Author:Evadne Price
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“But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church-with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility-is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time.”

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Book:The kingdom of God: and peace essays
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“The infallibility and inerrancy of biblical teaching does not, however, guarantee the infallibility and inerrancy of any interpretation or interpreter of that teaching; nor does the recognition of its qualities as the Word of God in any way prejudge the issue as to what Scripture does, in fact, assert. This can be determined only by careful Bible study.”

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Book:Fundamentalism
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“It is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions.”

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Author:John Stuart Mill
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“A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”

SpiritEffortSilenceLaughingSadnessLandDogMovementColdTerribleLaughterEternitySavagesFrozenHeartedHintsFutilityFrostLoneDesolationLifelessInfallibilitySphinxFutility Of Life
Book:The Call of the Wild and White Fang
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