Convert Quotes & Sayings

Our responsibility has never been to moralize the unconverted; it's to convert the immoral. Our responsibility is redemptive, not political. We do not have a moral agenda; we have a redemptive agenda. We can't reform the kingdom of darkness that Satan rules. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

All Christian religions are outer-directed. "Who can I convert?" "Let's go to this country and make them Christians." "Wear this." "Do that." "No, don't worship that way. Worship this way or I'll kill you - for the good of your soul, of course." Meanwhile, followers of Eastern religions are sitting in the middle of their minds, experiencing a bliss and a level of consciousness that Western man can't begin to approach. — George Carlin

Kissing was very much like eating. But instead of reducing the appetite, the food consumed actually increased it. The food wasn't matter, it had no mass, and yet it seemed to convert into a very delicious energy inside me. — Matt Haig

Where God gives opportunity for preaching it is more than likely that he has some people to convert. Usually the Word of God takes root among some, though often in but a few. — Thomas Goodwin

I'm a closet Catholic. I love the iconography of the saints. There was a point in my life when I was going to convert to Catholicism, but I didn't want my grandmother spinning around in her grave like a rotisserie chicken. — Lynda Resnick

I often look at places and kind of mentally convert them to fantasy versions of themselves. — Samantha Shannon

Herod was convert,after all. His mother was Arab. His people, the Idumeans, had come to Judaism only a generation or two earlier. — Reza Aslan

There are lots of different strategies that an animal can use to survive. What a worm does is try to convert food into worms as soon as possible. In three days a single worm produces 300 progeny. So why put your resources into developing if you can make a brand-new worm in no time at all? — Cynthia Kenyon

The building had been sold and the new owners wanted to convert it into high-end condos. Oh, please. Chicago needed more high-end condos like they needed another baseball franchise. — Kelly Moran

The safest thing is always to try to convert everything that is in us and around us into action; let the others talk and argue about it as they please. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

{Rogers} sexual aim is "to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature who is the opposite of these: to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal. — Kingsley Amis

Exceptional people convert life's setbacks into future successes, — Carol S. Dweck

We have an ideal location for a couple of organic wineries on the island. But the reintroduction of commercial agriculture to Lanai is 100% dependent upon increasing the available water on the island. So we're going to use solar energy to convert seawater to fresh water. — Larry Ellison

To convert a day is to produce a product — Sunday Adelaja

Ah! it is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself. To arrive at what one really believes, one must speak through lips different from one's own. To know the truth one must imagine myriads of falsehoods. — Oscar Wilde

We accept the responsibility to preach the gospel to every person on earth. And if the question is asked, you mean you are out to convert the entire world? The answer is, 'yes'. We will try to reach every living soul. — Boyd K. Packer

Lent is a time of grace, a time to convert and live out our baptism fully. — Pope Francis

Time can be used to convert anything — Sunday Adelaja

A big issue for Muslims is when Christian evangelizing - telling people about the faith - becomes proselytizing, actively trying to convert. Some Muslims say Christian evangelizing seems like colonialism. — Bob Abernethy

The concept of this so-called "TerraPower reactor" is that you, in the same reactor, you both burn and breed. So, instead of making plutonium and then extracting it, we take uranium - the 99.3 percent that you normally don't do anything with - we convert that, and we burn it. — Bill Gates

Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant. — Philip Yancey

A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born in it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Miracles of grace must be the seals of our ministry; who can bestow them but the Spirit of God? Convert a soul without the Spirit of God! Why, you cannot even make a fly, much less create a new heart and a right spirit."48 — Steven J. Lawson

Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They're able to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and society and convert those changes into objects and ideas that people can understand. — Paola Antonelli

Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power. — John Wyndham

A French friend brought over a load of Gainsbourg vinyl and I worked my way through it: by the time I got to L'Histoire De Melody Nelson (1969) I was thinking, 'How can this man have died before I got to know his music?' I was a convert. — Sylvie Simmons

No matter how you look at it, all the emotions connected with love are not really immortal; like all other passions in life, they are bound to fade at some point. The trick is to convert love into some lasting friendship that overcomes the fading passion. — Harold Pinter

Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien. — Herman Melville

To this day, even when I hear about problems, as you've probably noticed, I tend to call them challenges. I don't dwell on them, and I immediately focus on how I can convert the challenge into an opportunity. — Tony Robbins

I wrote a novel about an economic/environmental collapse titled 'Soft Apocalypse,' and that's definitely the sort I'm best prepared for. To write the novel, I did a lot of reading on what we might expect, so at the first sign, I'm ready to convert all of my assets to gold and ammo and stock up on freeze-dried food. — Will McIntosh

I strongly urge students to learn to take risks, to be bold, to let their genius convert that fear into power and brilliance. — Robert Kiyosaki

Scientists will eventually stop flailing around with solar power and focus their efforts on harnessing the only truly unlimited source of energy on the planet: stupidity. I predict that in the future, scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel. — Scott Adams

This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack ... We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. — Ann Coulter

To convert college sports into professional sports would be tantamount to converting it into minor league sports. And we know that in the U.S., minor league sports aren't very successful either for fan support or for the fan experience. — Mark Emmert

The doctrines & miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small part of the human race, & even among Christian nations, what gross errors still exist! — Robert E.Lee

The idea was to reinvent mortgages by bundling thousands of them together as the backing for new and alluring securities that could be sold as alternatives to traditional government and corporate bonds - in short, to convert mortgages into bonds. — Niall Ferguson

The seventh type of guerrilla organization is that formed from bands of bandits and brigands. This, although difficult, must be carried out with utmost vigor lest the enemy use such bands to his own advantage. Many bandit groups pose as anti-Japanese guerrillas, and it is only necessary to correct their political beliefs to convert them. In — Mao Zedong

Countless people have attempted to define the absolute power of the world of nature. Some praise it as god, some call it the Buddha, others call it truth. Still others convert nature into a philosophy by which they attempt to sound its deepest truth. Such attempts to define the power of nature are no more than striving to escape its effects. — Koichi Tohei

Portability also explains why many old chests and trunks had domed lids- to throw off water during travel. The great drawback of trunks, of course, is that everything has to be lifted at to get things at the bottom. It took a remarkably long time- till the 1600s- before it occurred to anyone to put drawers in and thus convert trunks into chests of drawers. — Bill Bryson

I imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die. — Phillip Lopate

I know that a man who tries to convert me to any cause
is actually at work on his own conversion,
unless he is looking for funds under the mask of some fancied nobility. — Ben Hecht

This is the thing I've never understood: If someone is going to hell for being gay or being a Jew or a Muslim or having an abortion, then what are you worried about? You don't need to try and convert these people or try and save them. If you really believe in your religion, these people are already doomed, so stop worrying about them. — Lewis Black

Convert your weakness into uniqueness and you'd know how it feels... — Nikhil

To their simple, degenerate minds there was only one thing to do when faced by a God more powerful than their own: Convert.
Brandon Sanderson(Elantris) — Brandon Sanderson

Primitive, simplistic anti-Communism is all too often used as a common denominator for diverse efforts to perpetuate one's own power in a democratic system, convert opinions into dogma, and kill off all opposition, even silent. — Eugen Kogon

I read in the newspaper that the Catholic Church finally decided that it had been theologically improper to try to convert the Jews. Whoops! Sorry for all those inquisitions, crusades, and autos-da-fe. Previous popes were wrong - infallible, perhaps, but wrong. — Alan Dershowitz

Underlying the preaching of the Puritans are three basic axioms: 1. The unique place of preaching is to convert, feed and sustain, 2. The life of the preacher must radiate the reality of what he preaches, 3. Prayer and solid Bible study are basic to effective preaching. — J.I. Packer

Unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter. — Charles Yu

Hamid notes that the four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that this verse means "that Muslims must fight non-Muslims and offer them the following choices: Convert to Islam, pay a humiliating tax called jizyah or be killed." Indeed, he adds, "A basic search of almost ALL approved interpretations for the Quran supports the same violent conclusion. The 25 leading approved Quran Interpretations (commentaries) - that are usually used by Muslims to understand the Quran - unambiguously support the violent understanding of the verse."15 — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The biggest difference between the person who lives his or her dreams and the person who aspires is the decision to convert that first spark of motivation into immediate action. — Adam Braun

I don't think the job of the antiracist is to convert the far-out heathen racist, or give them their 'come to Jesus' moment, as it's called. They'll either have those or they won't, and usually, when they have them, it's not because of something someone said per se; it's because of some life crisis that makes them rethink. — Tim Wise

Both Mum and Dad were converts to Catholicism, and normally if you convert to Catholicism you have thought about it more than someone who just grew up with it, taking it for granted. — Tony Abbott

I knew I wanted to be permanently self-supporting and I vaguely thought I might work somewhere in the realm of ideas. I felt that I had within me an undeveloped fount of ideas. I did not know exactly what my ideas were, but whatever they were I wanted to convert people to them. — Rheta Childe Dorr

It is not possible that one man can convert another into a piece of property, thus at once annihilating all his personal rights, without the most flagrant injustice and usurpation. — Elijah Parish Lovejoy

It helps to not confuse theological philosophers with evangelists. There is a difference but objectively neither better than the other: an evangelist's mission is to convert; a theological philosopher's mission is to build an understanding of a position. — Criss Jami

What is a saint supposed to do, if not convert wolves? — Umberto Eco

Science today is a highly collaborative exercise, and to convert it into a contest, as the Nobel does, is a bad way to look at science. — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

NBC was trying to convert all of their local programming to color right away to encourage the sale of the sets, so I barely remember working in black and white, although I do know that I did do it, but there was not a major difference, though. — Jim Henson

We need a quickening of faith; faith in the power of the God of Pentecost to convict and convert three thousand in a day. Faith, not in a process of culture by which we hope to train children into a state of salvation, but faith in the mighty God who can quicken a dead soul into life in a moment; faith in moral and spiritual revolution rather than evolution. — A.C. Dixon

It is a part of Christianity to convert every natural talent to a religious use. — Hannah More

My thoughts and ideas are floating images in my mind. I find when it difficult to convert the pictures into words. — Tina J. Richardson

Will and George were doing well in business, and Joe was writing letters home in rhymed verse and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.

Samuel wrote to Joe, sayings, "I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you'd take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization down to a stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven't even got a shovel yet. — John Steinbeck

Some stuff I don't even put out. I'll just be home, happy, creating something for myself, and then ball it up and throw it in the trash. It's less about trying to prove something or get on somebody's list or make a fan happy or make a hater mad or convert a non-believer. That's not the case for me anymore. — Lupe Fiasco

Talking of being eaten by dogs, there's a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It's all eyewash. His belligerent attitude is simply - "
Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?"
That's it. Pure swank. A few civil words, and he will be grappling you ... What's the expression I've heard you use?"
Grappling me to his soul with hoops of steel, sir?"
In the first two minutes. He wouldn't hurt a fly, but he has to put up a front because his name's Poppet. One can readily appreciate that when a dog hears himself addressed day in and day out as Poppet, he feels he must throw his weight about. Is self-respect demands it."
Precisely, sir."
You'll like Poppet. Nice dog. Wears his ears inside out. Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?"
I could not say, sir."
Nor me. I've often wondered. — P.G. Wodehouse

Light and dark appear as opposites, and we've all learned to think of them as warring enemies. Duality is based on separation, yet the soul exists in harmony with everything, even darkness. Your shadow self knows this. As it holds negative energy for you, it tries to attract your attention, not to make you afraid or enraged or vindictive, but so that you can convert those feelings into understanding. Understanding is the light. — Deepak Chopra

Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture. — Emil Cioran

As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learn to convert the discomfort of discipline into the satisfaction of personal growth. — Tony Robbins

So unlike having to convert, you know, all the cars' or all the lorries' petrol stations, once you've actually got the clean fuels, it's relatively easy to, you know, get it to the airplanes. — Richard Branson

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words. — Grant Morrison

Every dollar and every moment of care devoted to increasing the individual importance of people, all skill and training, all fine organization to humanize work, every increase of political expression, is a protection against idle use of our military power, against any attempt to convert legitimate and necessary preparation for defense into an instrument of conquest. It may be said with justice that the man is dangerous who talks loudly about military preparation and is uninterested in social reform. It is the people engaged in adding to the values of civilization who have earned the right to talk about its defense. — Franklin Foer

Ramon looked closely at the little guy as he ate. "Maybe he's Jewish. I mean, if Sammy Davis Jr. could convert to Judaism, why not a chupacabra? We should name him Harry Mendelbaum."
I held up my arms in protest. "You're all racist. Now shut up. We'll call him Taco von Precious of Svenenstein. There, everybody happy?"
"Isn't von the same thing as of?" Frank asked. "Wouldn't that be kind of redundant?"
"You're redundant," I said. — Lish McBride

I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cozy homelike comfort of a fenced-in dogmatic creed? To this the answer is many-sided.
First, I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained by the abdication of reason. I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained from drink or drugs or amassing great wealth by swindling widows and orphans. It is not the happiness of the individual convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind. If you genuinely desire the happiness of mankind, certain forms of ignoble personal happiness are not open to you. If your child is ill, and you are a conscientious parent, you accept medical diagnosis, however doubtful and discouraging; if you accept the cheerful opinion of a quack and your child consequently dies, you are not excused by the pleasantness of belief in the quack while it lasted. — Bertrand Russell

I believe it's my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism. — Gore Vidal

We will convert the entire world to Islam with our logic. We are confident that the Islamic logic, culture, and discourse can prove their superiority in all fields over all schools of thought and theories. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

I don't know what I would have done if they had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become stiff. It took most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and not to stiffen when I was touched, or flinch, twitch, fidget, and eventually figure out how to move away. I learned to accept being hugged by my children when they were infants. Their joy at seeing me enter a room was real and filled with true love and affection and it showed in their embraces. Like a convert, when I learned the joy and comfort of being hugged by and hugging those I loved, I became a regular practitioner. — John William Tuohy

Once we have inexpensive energy, we can readily and inexpensively convert the vast amount of dirty and salinated water we have on the planet to usable water. — Ray Kurzweil

I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifices to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul. — Therese De Lisieux

When the Lord makes a new man of him, then all things wear a different aspect. So great is this change, that I once heard a convert say, Either all the world is changed, or else I am. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Poetry is the alchemy which teaches us to convert ordinary materials into gold. — Anais Nin

Historically, the best way to convert liberals is to have them move out of their parents' home, get a job, and start paying taxes. — Ann Coulter

We know what we have to do. And we know how to do it. If we fail to convert our self-destructing economy into one that is environmentally sustainable, future generations will be overwhelmed by environmental degradation and social disintegration. Simply stated, if our generation does not turn things around, our children may not have the option of doing so. — Lester R. Brown

The only way to convert a heathen is to travel into the jungle. — Lane Kirkland

There is no greater paradox in the cosmos," the deceased had written, "than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness ('without me, you can do nothing') alongside God's 'helplessness.' Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he 'needs' us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes - to render God 'helpless' - is to say No. But God is not helpless, really, because he has mercy - himself. And what mercy does is convert, change our hearts. Which God never stops trying to do until we are dead. This means continued suffering for him, which is what Christ is all about." Young — William F. Buckley Jr.

For centuries, we were taught that anger is bad. Our parents, teachers, priests, everyone taught us how to control and suppress our anger. But I ask: why can't we convert our anger for the larger good of society? — Kailash Satyarthi

We are not evil. We don't harm or seduce people. We are not dangerous. We are ordinary people like you. We have families, jobs, hopes, and dreams. We are not a cult. This religion is not a joke. We are not what you think we are from looking at T.V. We are real. We laugh, we cry. We are serious. We have a sense of humor. You don't have to be afraid of us. We don't want to convert you. And please don't try to convert us. Just give us the same right we give you
to live in peace. We are much more similar to you than you think. — Margot Adler

God, Jack, it makes you want to go out and convert the whole damn world to homosexuality," she told him. "Just so you can walk down the street with your head up. "Maybe — Lily Tomlin Ann Bannon

Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him, that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law. — Friedrich Schiller

A person who takes a concrete place and convert it into a garden of flowers is a real magician! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Conversion is a work above man's power ... Never think you can convert yourself. If ever you would be savingly converted, you must despair of doing it in your own strength. It is a resurrection from the dead, a new creation, a work of absolute omnipotence ... This is a supernatural work. — Joseph Alleine

This was the period when I used all the influence I had to get the British to abandon their export trade, and as much as possible convert all of their manufacturing facilities to the immediate needs of the war, including civilian, as well as military requirements. — W. Averell Harriman

Seychelles said at U.N. climate talks. The report was bound to sharpen disputes in Lima over who pays the bills for the impacts of global warming, whose primary cause is the burning of coal, oil and gas but which also includes deforestation. It has long been the thorniest issue at the U.N. negotiations, now in their 20th round. Rich countries have pledged to help the developing world convert to clean energy and adapt to shifts in global weather that are already adversely affecting crops, human health and economies. But poor countries say they're not seeing enough cash. Projecting the annual costs that poor countries will face by 2050 just to adapt, the United Nations Environment Program report deemed the previous estimate of $70 billion to $100 billion "a significant underestimate." It had been based on 2010 World Bank numbers. — Anonymous

All I do is convert liberals to conservatism. That's what I do, and that's why they don't like me. — Rush Limbaugh

Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat. Quite a lot of the differences that make us rich and poor are matters just of luck. To somehow revel in one's privilege would be a mistake. An even bigger mistake would be trying to convert that into a theory that the rich are so much more productive than many of us. — Amartya Sen

You cannot convert people beyond your own conversion. — James E. Faust

To vest a few fallible men - prosecutors, judges, jurors - with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products ... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries ... — Jerome Frank

The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all material. He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Old marketing was dictation ... new marketing is communication. Change from Convince & Convert to Converse & Convert! — Ted Rubin

If you have information you've got the world by the balls. But we have to convert information into knowledge in order to make it humanly useful. — Aleksandar Hemon

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. — Pat Robertson