Quotes & Sayings About Idol Worship

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. — Swami Vivekananda

The death of 'the god of western theism', the destruction of the idol, is opening the way to a rediscovery of the acts of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the living God of the worship and confession of the Fathers of the Church, he who makes himself fully known in Jesus Christ, and who in his Word and his Spirit is present and at work throughout the whole of what he has made. — A.M. Allchin

Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it. — Swami Vivekananda

You've built yourselves a god from silver and gold.
How does that differ from idol worship, except
Those people worship one god and you a hundred? — Dante Alighieri

The idol is the expression of religion. — Swami Vivekananda

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Since ancient times, people have bowed down to idols in the appearance of humility and contrition. But their goal wasn't to be mastered by the idol. People worship to get things. We choose idols in part because we believe that they will give us what we want. The god of drugs brings fearlessness; the god of sex promises pleasure and intimacy; the god of wealth holds out power and influence. We can feel miserable about ourselves because we want to be great, at least at something, and we are not feeling very great. Like the prophets of Baal, we are arrogant enough to believe that we can manipulate the idol - whether by cutting or some other form of works righteousness - so it will relent and give us what we want. — Edward T. Welch

The free person does not live by an unexamined faith. To do so is to worship an idol whittled out and made into a fetish. — James Luther Adams

You don't really get to choose. We worship you, and that makes you our God. — Brandon Sanderson

Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry
the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. — Charles Caleb Colton

We make an idol of truth itself, for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and an idol that we must not love or worship. — Blaise Pascal

Where am I?" you ask. Where you are is where the things you've denied worshipping have taken you. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness. — Jeanette Winterson

Society must fight against this belief in God as it fought against idol worship and other narrow conceptions of religion. In this way man will try to stand on his feet. Being realistic, he will have to throw his faith aside and face all adversaries with courage and valour. That is exactly my state of mind. — Bhagat Singh

One is proud to worship when he cannot be an idol. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The fear of man, the trust in man, the deference to the opinion of man, is the merest worship of a rag-stuffed idol. — George MacDonald

From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. "Men make gods and women worship them," said Frazer; it is men who decide if their supreme divinities will be females or males; the place of woman in society is always the one they assign her; at no time has she imposed her own law. — Simone De Beauvoir

So that when man can be in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of God is helpful to man in distress.
Society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religion. Similarly, when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. — Bhagat Singh

When people believe that what you believe is what they believe, they turn you into a belief. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The new goddess contingency could not be erected until the God of heaven was utterly despoiled of his dominion over the sons of men, and in the room thereof a home-bred idol of self-sufficiency set up, and the world persuaded to worship it. But that the building climb no higher, let all men observe how the word of God overthrows this babylonian tower. — John Owen

This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do. — Swami Vivekananda

Money makes a monster of a man, that makes money his master. — Anthony Liccione

...the Virgin of Guadalupe was not a mere Christian front for the worship of a pagan goddess. The adoration of Guadalupe represented a profound change of Aztec religious belief...The pagan Tonantzin was a dual-natured earth goddess who fed her Mexican children and devoured their corpses. She wore a necklace of human hands and hearts with a human skull hanging over her flaccid breasts, which nursed both gods and men. her idol depicts her as a monster with two streams of blood shaped like serpents flowing from her neck. Like other major deities in the Aztec pantheon, Tonantzin was both a creator and destroyer...The Christian ideals of beauty, love, and mercy associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe were never attributed to the pagan deity."
William Madsen, "Religious Syncretism", Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, p.378. — William Madsen

What is to become of an independent statesman, one who will bow the knee to no idol, who will worship nothing as a divinity but truth, virtue, and his country? I will tell you; he will be regarded more by posterity than those who worship hounds and horses; and although he will not make his own fortune, he will make the fortune of his country. — John Adams

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.
So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb. — William Cowper

Little children, keep yourselves from idols." And let this be the test or criterion of what an idol is. Whatever worship or fellowship or companionship, whatever System or society, whatever work or way, whatever habit or pursuit or occupation, is of such a sort in itself, or has such influence over you, that you cannot be in it and at the same time be in God, or that you may be in it and yet not be in God, as little children in a loving Father; that to you is idolatry, be the object of your regard what it may. From all such idols keep yourselves. And that you may keep yourselves from them ail, abide evermore in the Son of God, your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To be in him is your only security, to be always "found in him." For to be in him is to be in the Father, even as he is in the Father. And there can be no idolatry in that. AMEN. — Robert Smith Candlish

Be formless. As long as your "I" is asserted, it will be an idol of worship — AainaA-Ridtz

I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not. — Idries Shah

This sentiment has very simple characteristics, such as worship of a being supposed superior, fear of the power with which the being is credited, blind submission to its commands, inability to discuss its dogmas, the desire to spread them, and a tendency to consider as enemies all by whom they are not accepted. Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always remains religious. — Gustave Le Bon

He looked like an idol consecrated to the gods of arrogance. Damned if I would bow. — Miles Watson

In the Kural there is a chapter on invocation to God. But there is no place in it for principle of idol worship. — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth. — Vance Havner

I'm fairly certain I'm having my first truly religious experience, and it's probably a very bad thing that it's happening in a church, but it's over a sculpture. Mental note: Add idol worship to your list for confession. — Lisa Desrochers

It's not enough, and so limiting, to teach the simplistic value of a designer's material wear. Give children the gift of values that will last far beyond [a] fad's temporal popularity. — T.F. Hodge

For all this, man is embodied and trusting in his senses; he had sooner believe in a sensible improbability than in an insensible uncertainty, that is, sooner worship an idol than grapple with the philosophers. — Neel Burton

If our sense of self, our values and our ideals, do not originate from within - but are instead largely influenced, shaped or fashioned by celebrated characters - we fall under the spells of idol worship without realizing we have 'souled out'. — T.F. Hodge

The point that I think myself to be so terribly clever is the precise point at which I am beginning to think myself to be god-like, which causes me to become God-less. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Objectivity is a false god, and the worship of this idol is particularly pernicious in disciplines like journalism and history. It is not possible to be objective
although of course it is possible to be honest. By pretending to attain to objectivity, a writer's fundamental faith commitments are not eliminated, but rather submerged
and they then come out in interesting and intellectually dishonest ways. — Douglas Wilson

Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed-he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical overmaturity and emotional backwardness? — Erich Fromm

These critics with the illusions they've created about artists - it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up ... I cannot be on the way up again. — John Lennon

The eternal, the infinite, and unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as "my god" or "our god. — Eckhart Tolle

Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it? — Joseph Sobran

I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws. — N. T. Wright

Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain. — Swami Vivekananda

The world has not gone one step beyond idolatry yet. — Swami Vivekananda

There are valleys that lead to the bottom of the world, so it seems, but what world is that? The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness. The more sophisticated my equipment, the stranger the worlds it detects. I sometimes think I'm sailing through a vast thought. — Jeanette Winterson

In a modern Western culture, where the main idol is self; and its main doctrine is autonomy; and its central act of worship is being entertained; and its three main shrines are the television, the Internet, and the cinema; and its most sacred genuflection is the uninhibited act of sexual intercourse. ========== This Momentary Marriage A Parable of Permanence — Anonymous

When a man makes a reverent face before a face that is no face - that is idol worship! — Menachem Mendel Of Kotzk

Christ is not God, not the saviour of the world, but a mere man, a sinful man and an abominable idol. All who worship him are abominable idolaters and Christ did not rise again from death to life nor did he ascend into heaven. — Matthew Hammond

If you make anything a higher priority than God, you are worshiping it and not God. — Jim George

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. — Swami Vivekananda

Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol ... — Alan Watts

We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika. — Swami Vivekananda

When you worship an idol, you're substituting a thing for the ultimate. — Abigail Disney

External beauty is certainly cool to admire, but when worshipped - it eclipses internal shine. — T.F. Hodge

Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that- the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart. — Emmuska Orczy

It's not the image that you bow to, but it's to the faith and feeling that remains true in your heart. And if you could relate to that internal feeling, then you can also relate to the immense universal consciousness outside the realm of your understanding, without the need to know or understand. - The Monk (Page - 46) — Shashi

Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit. — Walter Lippmann

There is no idol more debasing than the worship of money. — Andrew Carnegie

Those who thus seek to screen an idol from criticism only betray their own suspicions about the worthiness of the totem they worship. — Robert M. Price

The requirement to obey and acknowledge God and Jesus Christ has caused the teachings of the Christian tradition to stray from morality to idol worship,
creating a world in which a murderer can be forgiven and sent to heaven, whereas a loving and caring skeptic would be cast into damnation. — David G. McAfee

Every idol, if you scratch it, is a mirror. We worship ourselves. — R.C. Sproul Jr.

With the idol of certainty (including that of degrees of imperfect certainty or probability) there falls one of the defences of obscurantism which bar the way of scientific advance. For the worship of this idol hampers not only the boldness of our questions, but also the rigour and the integrity of our tests. The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth. — Karl Popper

My hectic work schedule does not often permit me time to visit temples, but my conversations with God don't depend on idol worship. Inside my heart, I have developed and sustained a direct communication with Him. — Emraan Hashmi

Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry - to them I say "Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?" — Swami Vivekananda

What you do with your life is ascribing more to what you invest your time in. If you spend a lot of time on your phone, you're ascribing more worship to that. Anything can become, by that definition, some form of idol or deity or ultimate worth in your life. — Jon Foreman

Wasn't that what Jesus said: do what I do? He was here as an example for us to follow. Same with all prophets. Didn't the prophets tell us to be like them? That's what's wrong with Christianity. They make Jesus and the prophets into icons, take them off of earth, and put them in heaven to worship them, so they're no longer accessible. You've taken a reality and made it into a worthless idol. Christians talk about the idolatry of other religions, but when they no longer live principles and just worship the people who taught them, that's exactly what they're doing. — Daniel Suelo

As for [Amiri] Baraka, he and I have disagreements. I mean, he becomes a demagogue when there's an audience. He's a nice guy in private. I mean I like the guy; he's a terrific writer. I've published two of his books. Baraka is one of these fundamentalists who is prone to idol worship. — Ishmael Reed

I've had many idols growing up. The inclination for idol worship comes naturally to me. Or it did, anyway. I think I've gotten over it. It came as naturally to me as wanting to act. — Kevin Corrigan