Human Salvation Quotes & Sayings

Rather than attack the Christian faith directly, many films undermine foundational Christian principles, including the human need for salvation. These films present a false "gospel" that leads people away from the truth. Recognizing these messages in movies can help us avoid being adversely influenced by them. Just as importantly, the messages in these stories can provide us with starting points for sharing the true gospel of Jesus Christ. — Douglas Beaumont

To you, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism look very different, but to me they look the same. Many of you would say that something like Buddhism doesn't even belong on the list, since it doesn't link salvation to divine worship, but to me this is just a quibble. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all perceive human beings as flawed, wounded creatures in need of salvation, and all rely fundamentally on revelations that spell out how salvation is to be attained, either by departing from this life or rising above it. — Daniel Quinn

To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things. — Rob Bell

Remorse (I did it) is an easy, passive, human reaction, there is no value in it and it changes nothing. Repentance (I will not do it again) is the difficult call to action in a redeemed heart. It has an eternal impact and it can change everything. — William Branks

Analysis, when seen as limited and never final, helps force the
question of human responsibility, human judgment, and the suffering that
accompanies the assumption of the burden they impose. It is our willingness to assume this burden of suffering that is the only salvation we have,
in the end, against evil. — O.C. McSwite

In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potentialities of modern science, we move toward a new era in which science can fulfill its creative promise and help bring into existence the happiest society the world has ever known. — John F. Kennedy

Christianity is not a doctrine, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For 'consciousness of sin' is a real event an so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The sabbath was made for men. But man now behaves like the Pharisees and insists that he is made for all the things - science , nation , money, religion, schools - which were really made for him. Why? Because he is so little aware of his own interests as a human being that he feels irresistibly tempted to sacrifice himself to these idols. There is no remedy except to become aware of one's interest as a human being , and , having become aware , to learn to act on that awareness. Which means learning to use the self and learning to direct the mind. It's almost wearisome, the way one always comes back to the same point. Wouldn't it be nice , for a change , if there were another way out of our difficulties! A short cut. A method requiring no greater personal effort than recording a vote or ordering some " enemy of society" to be shot. A salvation from outside, like a does of calomel. — Aldous Huxley

God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few. — Saul Bellow

Merciful heavens! Human treatment may even render human a man in whom the image of God has long ago been tarnished. It is these 'unfortunates' that must be treated in the most human fashion. This is their salvation and their joy. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The appropriate response to this gospel proclamation is to rethink everything in the light of the risen and ascended Christ and live accordingly. We rethink our lives (which is what it means to repent) not so we can escape a doomed planet, but in order to participate in God's design to redeem the human person and renovate human society in Christ. Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project! — Brian Zahnd

The aim of education should not be to teach how to use human energies to improve the environment, for we are finally beginning to realize that the cornerstone of education is the development of the human personality, and that in this regard education is of immediate importance for the salvation of mankind. — Maria Montessori

Though the New Testament stressed God's free choice of Jacob over Esau (see Romans 9:10-13), this incident highlights the other side of the story - human responsibility. It cannot be denied that 'Esau despised his birthright' (Genesis 25:34b; Hebrews 12:16-17). There is a tension between God's choice of Jacob and Esau's responsibility for freely selling his birthright. In the same way, God's grace draws us to Jesus for salvation (John 6:44), but at the same time, it remains our duty to believe (John 3:16). — Samuel Ngewa

Against the new leviathan, whether in the guise of universal suffrage, democracy, or of an equally fraudulent triumphant proletariat, he (Kierkegaard) pitted the individual human soul made in the image of a God who was concerned about the fate of every living creature. In contrast with the notion of salvation through power, he held out the hope of salvation through suffering. The Cross against the ballot box or clenched fist; the solitary pilgrim against the slogan-shouting mob; the crucified Christ against the demagogue-dictators promising a kingdom of heaven on earth, whether achieved through endlessly expanding wealth and material well-being, or through the ever greater concentration of power and its ever more ruthless exercise. — Malcolm Muggeridge

I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that the mescalin experience is what Catholic theologians call "a gratuitous grace," not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large - this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual. — Aldous Huxley

Generally speaking, we call neurotic any life style that begins to constrict too much, that prevents free forward momentum, new choices, and growth that a person may want and need. For example, a person who is trying to find his salvation only in a love relationship but who is being defeated by this too narrow focus is neurotic. He can become overly passive and dependent, fearful of venturing out on his own, of making his life without his partner, no matter how that partner treats him. The object has become his "All," his whole world; and he is reduced to the status of a simple reflex of another human being. — Ernest Becker

The most melancholy thing about human nature, is, that a man may guide others into the path of salvation, without walking in it himself; that he may be a pilot, and yet a castaway. — Prince Augustus William Of Prussia

I have a strong spiritual commitment, and I try to express that in my work. Salvation cannot be worked out in human terms. The point of my writing is to touch upon the systematics of prayer and on how we arrive at a method of achieving spiritual coherence in our lives. — Richard Grossman

Like most people, my views about ghosts and haunted places were traditional while growing up. I believed ghosts were human spirits. Not that I talked to many people about the subject or my experiences. I assumed people would think I was weird. — Kristine McGuire

Some people say that our salvation lies with God, or with God's Son, yet is not the human heart the place where such Divinity is found? Therefore open your heart, and open TO your heart, that you may hear its call to reflect, to be meek, and to be responsible. — Neale Donald Walsch

The work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us. — N. T. Wright

To understand antiquity's idea of man, we must examine its gods and heroes, myths and legends. In these we find the classical prototype of genuine man. ... the will to greatness, wealth, power and fame. Anything opposed to it falls short of the authentically human. ...

What a world of difference between this conception and that to which Christ has led us! ...

Jesus' friends are in no way remarkable for their talent or character. He who considers the apostles or disciples great from a human or religious point of view raises the suspicion that he is unacquainted with true greatness. Moreover, he is confusing standards, for the apostle and disciple have nothing to do with such greatness. Their uniqueness consists of their being sent, of their God-given role of pillars for the coming salvation. — Romano Guardini

In the Eroica and other pieces of his middle years, Beethoven hailed the enlightened leader, the benevolent despot, the military spirit. Now for him the military spirit is nothing but destruction. By the end of this section the bugles are raging, the drums roaring, the choir crying Dona pacem! in terror. Now we understand what Beethoven meant by "prayer for inner and outer peace." The inner peace is that of the spirit. The outer peace is in the world. The fear and trembling in the Missa solemnis is not the fear of losing salvation in eternity; it is the human, secular fear of violence and chaos. — Jan Swafford

In the history of a soul's evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured. — Virchand Gandhi

An important distinction can be made between religion and spirituality. Religion [is] concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition ... Spirituality is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, that bring happiness both to self. — Dalai Lama

Anyone who is a sinner in the human race ... is a candidate for salvation. — Debora Hooper

The Spirit has his own existence and personal function in the inner life of God and the economy of salvation: his task is to bring about the unity of the human race in the Body of Christ, but he also imparts to this unity a personal, and hence diversified, character. — John Meyendorff

Each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly. The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature. Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without - that he himself must work out his own salvation! He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him. Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it. — H. Rider Haggard

To strategize a rescue mission irrefutably capable of saving every human being is leagues beyond our ability to comprehend, and enormous beyond any resource we possess to execute. And to embark upon just such a mission fully knowing that without our death the mission will fall to failure is bravery of the greatest sort imaginable. Yet, that is exactly what Christmas is. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The enemy of the human race ... invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people. — Pope John Paul II

For believers to doubt their security is to question God's integrity and power. It is to add the merit of human works to the gracious, unmerited work of God. And it is to add self-trust to trust in our Lord, because if salvation can be lost by anything that we can or cannot do, our ultimate trust must obviously be in ourselves rather than in God. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of the relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one's fellow-men the great Love. — Martin Buber

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Augustine recast how people should view history, that history was not the story of the rise and fall of empires because those are human things. Those are the city of man. Rather, true history should be the history of salvation, of man moving toward God. It's a focus that takes the light off of this world and shines it much more brightly on the next world. — Thomas F. Madden

So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead - being my brothers' and sisters' keeper ... And I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. — Barack Obama

And this is the mission of the church
not civilization, but salvation
not better laws, purer legislation, social elevation, human equality and liberty, but first, the "kingdom of God and His righteousness;" regenerated hearts, and all other things will follow. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Catastrophe alone sparks man's salvation. I don't mean in the religious sense, although I guess it is appropriate there, too, because believers agree that salvation comes only after death. It is part of the human near-tragedy that we learn more from loss than from gain. Gain binds us until we stumble and fall into that black pit then we find the spirit of understanding and truth. And if we fall far enough and still persist, we find our salvation. — John Kramer

The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody. — Robert Green Ingersoll

She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. — E. M. Forster

It is true that historic Christianity is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day; it does emphasize, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual soul. It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come alone into the presence of God. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world; it resolutely refuses to make of the individual a mere means to an end, a mere element in the composition of society. It rejects altogether any means of salvation which deals with men in a mass; it brings the individual face to face with his God. — J. Gresham Machen

But Mather's smile faded as he thought of what other provisions the charter contained. What would the godly say when they learned that the electorate was no longer to be limited to members of the Covenant but broadened to include propertied members of every Christian sect this side of papistry? This was a revolutionary innovation, whose consequences would be incalculable. Hitherto the limitation of the privilege of voting to the elect had been the very corner-stone of theocracy. It had been a wise and human provision designed to keep the faithful in control even when, as had long ago become the case, they were heavily outnumbered by lesser men without the Covenant. God who had not designated the majority of men to salvation surely never intended for the damned to rule. Yet now, under the new charter, it very much looked as if they might. — Marion L. Starkey

To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation. — Thomas Aquinas

Every human being should regard himself as if he were exactly balanced between innocence and guilt. Simultaneously he should regard the world as being in the same case. It follows then that if he performs one good deed, he has weighted the scales in favour of both himself and of the whole world, and thus brought about salvation both for himself and for all the inhabitants of the world. — Maimonides

I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

The suppression of ecstasy and condemnation of pleasure by patriarchal religion have left us in a deep, festering morass. The pleasures people seek in modern times are superficial, venal, and corrupt. This is deeply unfortunate, for it justifies the patriarchal condemnation of pleasure that rotted out our hedonistic capacities in the first place! Narcissism is rampant, having reached a truly global scale. It now appears to have entered the terminal phase known as "cocooning," the ultimate state of isolation. Dissociation from the natural world verges on complete disembodiment, represented in Archontic ploys such as "transhumanism," cloning, virtual reality, and the uploading of human consciousness into cyberspace. The computer looks due to replace the cross as the primary image of salvation. It is already the altar where millions worship daily. If the technocrats prevail, artificial intelligence and artificial life will soon overrule the natural order of the planet. — John Lamb Lash

St. John says: "This is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith." (1 John 5:4). God has created us simply to labor at our souls' salvation and to become holy. "This is the will of God, your sanctification," says the Apostle. (1 Thess. 4:3). To this end all our efforts must be directed, and faith puts us in a position to overcome all the obstacles which the world opposes to the realization of our object, obstacles such as human respect, the inordinate desires of the flesh, in a word, all the temptations of Hell. — Alfonso Maria De Liguori

We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment — John Calvin

I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was most certainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator. He adopted toward God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the proper Creator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relation. — A.W. Tozer

It's very important that people take back their minds and that people analyse our dilemma in the context of the entire human story from the descent onto the grassland to our potential destiny as citizens of the galaxy and the universe. We are at a critical turning point and, as I say; the tools, the data that holds the potential for our salvation is now known, it is available: it is among us, but it is misrepresented, it is slandered, it is litigated against, and it's up to each one of us to relate to this situation in a fashion that will allow us to answer the question that will surely be put to us at some point in the future, which is: What did you do to help save the world? — Terence McKenna

The weakness of God is stronger than human strength. And it leads, as Jesus said it would lead, to a life of following him, which would itself be about taking up the cross and so finding life, about the meek inheriting the earth. The point of it all, once more, is vocational: if we can study Genesis and human origins without hearing the call to be an image-bearing human being renewed in Jesus, we are massively missing the point, perhaps pursuing our own dream of an otherworldly salvation that merely colludes with the forces of evil, as gnosticism always does. — N. T. Wright

Kirk defined the ideologue as one who "thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature." Unleashed during the most radical phase of the French Revolution, the spirit of ideology has metastasized over the past two centuries, wreaking horrors. Jacobinism, Anarchism, Marxism, Leninism, Fascism, Stalinism, Nazism, Maoism - all shared the fatal attraction to "political messianism"; all were "inverted religions." Each of these ideologies preached a dogmatic approach to politics, economics, and culture. Each in its own way endeavored "to substitute secular goals and doctrines for religious goals and doctrines." Thus did the ideologue promise "salvation in this world, hotly declaring that there exists no other realm of being."17 — Russell Kirk

Yes, human salvation will come through science, but only through the nature-respecting science! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

God is still primarily concerned with his plan of salvation. He must establish his people; the gospel must be proclaimed; human beings must be reconciled to him. Yet he assures his people that serving the good of this pagan city is part of this very plan: "If it prospers, you too will prosper" (Jer 29:7). Loving and serving the city not only shows love and compassion; doing so also strengthens the hands of the people of God, who bear the message of the gospel to the world. Because the Jews in exile obeyed this command, they accrued the influence and leverage needed to eventually return to and restore their homeland. God ties, as it were, the fortunes of the people of God to the effectiveness of their urban ministry. — Timothy Keller

The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. — Flannery O'Connor

Winslow says I don't understand plotting and probably I don't - I have been congratulated many times on the skill shown in my plotting when I knew damn well that the story in question had not been plotted in advance at all. My notion of a story is an interesting situation in which a human being has to cope with a problem, does so, and thereby changes his personality, character, or evaluations in some measure because the coping has forced him to revise his thinking. How h copes with it I can't plot because that depends on his character, and I don't know his what his character is until i get acquainted with him. When I can "hear the character talk" then I'm all right - he works out his own salvation. — Robert A. Heinlein

It's natural for a person to deny he's a failure as a human being. That's why he searches for somebody who is more miserable than himself. That's why so much animosity exists on the Internet. Those who aren't able to find a more miserable person turn to the Internet and call other people losers, even though they've never met just to make themselves superior. Isn't that pathetic? There's a sense of security that comes from speaking badly of someone else. But that isn't true salvation. — Tatsuhiko Takimoto

The experience I'm talking about has given me one certainty: the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in human consciousness, nothing will change for the better, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed will be unavoidable. — Vaclav Havel

God has appointed that each human being should live one life, die one death and pass through one judgment for the life once lived. Therefore Jesus Christ also lived one life, died one death and God judged the life Christ had lived. Finding it pleasing in every respect, God certified his verdict by raising Christ from the dead. Because of Jesus' one life, one death and one judgment, God accepts the "many" who now eagerly wait for him to return bringing salvation. UNPACKING — Edward William Fudge

I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world. — Tennessee Williams

The world of pure spirits stretches between the divine nature and the world of human beings; because divine wisdom has ordained that the higher should look after the lower, angels execute the divine plan for human salvation: they are our guardians, who free us when hindered and help to bring us home. — Thomas Aquinas

If we were the best hope the human race had for its salvation, things were more fucked up than I'd thought. — Manel Loureiro

Wherefore, as I have said to you, I, God, have become man, and man has become God by the union of My Divine Nature with your human nature. This greatness is given in general to all rational creatures, but, among these I have especially chosen My ministers for the sake of your salvation, so that, through them, the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb, My only-begotten Son, may be administered to you. — St. Catherine Of Siena

As long as you and I understand salvation as checking off a box to get to God, we will find ourselves in the meaningless sea of world religions that actually condemn the human race by exalting our supposed ability to get to God. On the other hand, when you and I realize that we are morally evil, dead in sin and deserving of God's wrath with no way out on our own, we begin to discover our desperation for Christ. — David Platt

The world's theology
The world's theology is easy to define.
It is the view ...
that human beings are basically good,
that no one is really lost,
that belief in Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation.
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."
Romans 1:22
— James Montgomery Boice

Ministry. Sadly, there has never been a city on earth that is not saturated with human sin and corruption. Indeed, to paraphrase a Woody Allen joke, cities are just like everywhere else, only much more so. They are both better and worse, both easier and harder to live in, both more inspiring and oppressive, than other places. As redemptive history unfolds, we begin to see how the tension of the city will be resolved. The turn in the relationship between the people of God and the pagan city becomes a key aspect of God's plan to bless the nations and redeem the world. In the New Testament, we find cities playing an important role in the rapid growth of the early church and in spreading the gospel message of God's salvation. — Timothy Keller

There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation. — Christopher Hitchens

Has the word propitiation any place in your Christianity? In the faith of the New Testament it is central. The love of God, the taking of human form by the Son, the meaning of the cross, Christ's heavenly intercession, the way of salvation-all are to be explained in terms of itand any explanation from which the thought of propitiation is missing will be incomplete, and indeed actually misleading, by New Testament standards — J.I. Packer

The way of Jesus is thus not a set of beliefs about Jesus. That people ever thought it was is strange, when we think about it - as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word "Jesus". Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables.
Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection - the path of transition and transformation from an old way of being to a new way of being. To use the language of incarnation that is so central to John, Jesus incarnates the way. Incarnation means embodiment. Jesus is what the way embodied in a human life looks like. — Marcus J. Borg

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart. — Vaclav Havel

One day we shall domesticate him into a human being & then I shall be able to sketch him. For this is what we have done with ourselves & with God. The little boy will assist his own domestication; he is diligent & cooperative. He cooperates without knowing that the assistance we expect of him is for his own self-sacrifice. Recently, he has had much practice. And so he will go on progressing until little by little
because of essential goodness with which we achieve our salvation
he will pass from actual time to daily time, from meditation to expression, from existence to life. Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would constitute madness. — Clarice Lispector

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. — Viktor E. Frankl

Our salvation is not in some father or human instruments. It is sad to see people so blinded, worshiping the creature more than the Creator. — William J. Seymour

For with love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light and, alas, the blackest despair. — Victor Hugo

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation. — Paul Hoffman

Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation. — Blaise Pascal

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility. — Vaclav Havel

And above all, what a strange attitude that actually is, when we no longer find Christian service worthwhile if the denarius of salvation may be obtained even without it! It seems as if we want to be rewarded, not just with our own salvation, but most especially with other people's damnation - just like the workers hired in the first hour. That is very human, but the Lord's parable is particularly meant to make us quite aware of how profoundly un-Christian it is at the same time. Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because THAT kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God.
-What It Means To Be A Christian — Pope Benedict XVI

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them. — Abraham Lincoln

Believe in God, in His providence, in a future life, in the recompense of the good; in the punishment of the wicked; in the sublimity and truth of the doctrines of Christ, in a revelation of this doctrine by a special divine inspiration for the salvation of the human race. — Andre-Marie Ampere

Revelation is for human salvation, the mending of human brokenness (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 3). — Thomas C. Oden

Salvation has absolutely nothing to do with human merit and absolutely everything to do with divine mercy. — David Platt

It is a strange misunderstanding to make Paul either a fatalist or a particularist; he is the strongest opponent of blind necessity and of Jewish particularism, even in the ninth chapter of Romans. But he aims at no philosophical solution of a problem which the finite understanding of man cannot settle; he contents himself with asserting its divine and human aspects, the religious and ethical view, the absolute sovereignty of God and the relative freedom of man, the free gift of salvation and the just punishment for neglecting it. Christian experience includes both truths, and we find no contradiction in praying as if all depended on God, and in working as if all depended on man. This is Pauline theology and practice. — Philip Schaff

As a result of Christ's salvific work, man exists on earth with the hope of eternal life and holiness. And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in his Cross and Resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering: the light of salvation. — Pope John Paul II

The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one - of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation. — Louis Sullivan

Trusting in Christ, we may boldly join in the combat, and enlist ourselves among that disinterested band, who fight not for human ambition, or human praise, but for the honour of our Saviour, and the salvation of men. — John Strachan

There is no morality by instinct. There is no social salvation in the end without taking thought; without mastery of logic and application of logic to human experience. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence. — B.R. Ambedkar

But when He became incarnate, and was made man, He commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief, comprehensive manner, with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam - namely to be according to the image and likeness of God - that we might recover in Jesus Christ — Michelle A. Gonzalez

The Good News must be backed by integrity in our lives. We cannot proclaim His love if we close our hearts to the hungry. We cannot proclaim His salvation if we have not been saved from our own greed. Flamboyant, prosperous Christians are an offense to third world peoples by their insensitivity to the poverty and human deprivation, whether they come as traveling evangelists or sight-seeing vacationers. — Richard J. Foster

The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor ... Official acceptance is the one unmistakable symptom that salvation is beaten again, and is the one surest sign of fatal misunderstanding, and is the kiss of Judas. — James Agee

Society may protect itself without putting a human to death as it would a wild animal. Since we believe each person has a soul, and is capable of achieving salvation, life in prison is now an alternative to the death penalty. — Richard Viguerie

Just as the commander of an army pitches his camp, studies the strength and defenses of a fortress, and then attacks it on its weakest side, in like manner, the enemy of our human nature studies from all sides our theological, cardinal, and moral virtues. Wherever he finds us weakest and most in need regarding our eternal salvation, he attacks and tries to take us by storm. — Ignatius Of Loyola

If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation were true, it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one's own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of ones eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human — Friedrich Nietzsche

Unlike other human religions, they worshipped something that truly existed. Also unlike other human religions, it was the Lord who was in crisis, and the duty of salvation fell on the shoulders of the believer. — Liu Cixin

For the Reformation is nothing other than Augustianianism come to its rights: the turning away from all that is human to rest on God alone for salvation. — Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Human existence is a brutal experience to me ... it's a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it [salvation] is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. — Woody Allen

Catholicism is contrary to human liberty. Catholicism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches man to trample his reason under foot. And for that reason it is wrong. — Robert Green Ingersoll

No one can make himself pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ does not give us rules and regulations - He gives us His teachings which are truths that can only be interpreted by His nature which He places within us. The great wonder of Jesus Christ's salvation is that He changes our heredity. He does not change human nature - He changes its source, and thereby its motives as well. — Oswald Chambers

Observe that for the novelist who has remained Christian, like myself, man is someone creating himself or destroying himself. He is not an immobile being, fixed, cast in a mold once and for all. This is what makes the traditional psychological novel so different from what I did or thought I was doing. The human being as I conceive him in the novel is a being caught up in the drama of human salvation, even if he doesn't know it. — Francois Mauriac

Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God. — Frederick Buechner