Quotes & Sayings About Idols

The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of. — Willem De Kooning

The popes have spoken of human ecology, closely linked to environmental ecology. We are living in a time of crisis: we see this in the environment, but above all we see this in mankind Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules. God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the 'culture of waste.' — Pope Francis

You don't need to worship idols of the Virgin Mary, the Christ, or the Buddha. You can if you want to; if it feels good, do it. Your own body is a manifestation of God, — Miguel Ruiz

The absolutely alienated individual worships at the altar of an idol, and it makes little difference by what names this idol is known. — Erich Fromm

I've got a feeling I'm leaving stardom behind, you know. I'm gradually becoming more of a filmmaker, acquiring a different kind of dignity from that which you achieve in acting. After all, I'm no matinee idol, and I'm getting older. I don't think I can be doing my kind of thing in the seventies; I want to be on more of the creative side of business. — Steve McQueen

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. — Timothy Keller

Idolatry is really not good for anyone. Not even the idols. — John Bach

An idol is what man makes and then has to carry. God makes a man and then carries him. — Benjamin Whichcote

Last night, President Bush gave a prime-time press conference. It was such a big deal that Fox decided to preempt American Idol. Which made sense to me, you don't want too many amateurs on in one night. — David Letterman

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And — Imbolo Mbue

Once people stop believing in the God of the Bible, they don't believe in nothing
they begin to believe in anything. — Alistair Begg

Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises. — Pope Benedict XVI

A missionary is not a missionary until they set their ax against the roots of the culture's sacred oaks. They are not a missionary until they have issued a challenge against the central idols of that culture. A mission that only addresses the individual soul and never the society in which that soul operates is an exercise in futility. Only a comprehensive challenge, a message that proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord over everything - including rulers and powers - can win a nation for Christ. — Bojidar Marinov

Tony [Touch] is like my big brother. He's somebody that I grew up listening to. I've had the fortune of befriending a lot of my idols in a positive way. Tony is one of them. — Justin Smith

The given world dazzles with wonder, poetry, and purpose. The man-made world, on the other hand, is a perverse realm of ego and envy, where power-mad cynics make false idols of themselves and where the meek have no inheritance because they have gladly surrendered it to their idols in return not for lasting glory but for an occasional parade, not for bread but for the promise of bread. — Dean Koontz

And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? — William Shakespeare

Imagine yourself acclaimed, a decorated national hero, an idol to millions of desperate people, then within six months, condemned to death by hanging. — Joachim Peiper

Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross. — Martha Ostenso

Initially, all idols seem to deliver exactly this escape from mere goodness into transcendent greatness. Consider the weather. In our scientific age, amidst the technological achievements of modernity, we have lost much of our reverence for and sense of helpless dependence on the weather. But imagine the sense of mastery and awe that must have overwhelmed the first people who pounded out an exuberant and desperate dance, in hopes of cajoling the sky god into bringing rain, when they were rewarded by an unexpected cloudburst an hour or a day later. Or the sense of awed gratitude and newfound power when a libation poured out on the ground seemed to deliver an abundant harvest. There must have been some such moments - how else would the rituals have become credible? — Andy Crouch

So often we think that Allah only tests us with hardships, but this isn't true. Allah also tests with ease. He tests us with na'im (blessings) and with the things we love, and it is often in these tests that so many of us fail. We fail because when Allah gives us these blessings, we unwittingly turn them into false idols of the heart. — Yasmin Mogahed

I remember one guy, Reg Park, a British bodybuilder, who entered Mr Universe when he was very young. But he won it and continued to win it a second and third time. So, he was my idol. I read everything about Reg Park and followed his footsteps and trained like him. I said if he could make it, I could make it. It was a blueprint, basically, for how to get there, to win the championships. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

It has been a whirlwind really, it all happened so quickly! I auditioned for Australian Idol for the 3rd time ... to see where I was and if I had improved with my singing; and the next thing I knew in the final 12 and it went nuts from there - I walked straight off stage at the finals into a press conference and didn't have a days rest 'till New Years Day. — Kate DeAraugo

No, I like being a role model because I know how much comfort my musical idols brought me. — Shirley Manson

Jasmine hurried along the Grand Canal, dodging a group of diehard revelers, glancing back over her shoulder for the hundredth time. She couldn't see Gabe Cannon anywhere.
Her teenage fantasy man was hunting her brother. She sure hadn't seen that coming. Freaking surreal.
He looked just as good as when she'd first met him at that airport and had fallen instantly in love over pizza and chips. One of those unavoidable pitfalls of life, really. He'd been more handsome than any of her pop idols, and her teenage emotions had been just begging for an outlet.
She cringed in embarrassment when she thought of all the melodramatic drivel she'd written about him in her high school diary. — Dana Marton

Disgust at idols strengthened his love for idolaters, and the man who once held Gentile neighbors at a distance now listened to their problems, fears, and temptations. — John Charles Pollock

When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it. — J.D. Greear

Punk rock wasn't a career choice. It was a hobby that we did for fun. We never thought we'd get as big as our idols in T.S.O.L. or certainly not the Ramones. — Dexter Holland

Men can make an idol of the Bible. — Henry Ward Beecher

They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again. — Lester Bangs

There are Idols which we call Idols of the Market. For Men associate by Discourse, and a false and improper Imposition of Words strangely possesses the Understanding, for Words absolutely force the Understanding, and put all Things into Confusion. — Francis Bacon

Marriage includes a spouse, and often children. But the goal, center, and purpose of marriage is not self, spouse, or children. The ultimate goal of marriage and family is the glory of God. Only when marriage and family exist for God's glory - and not to serve as replacement idols - are we able to truly love and be loved. Remember, neither your child nor your husband (or wife) should be who you worship, but instead who you worship with. — Mark Driscoll

As God was expunged from American life, idols came in to fill the void; idols of sensuality, idols of greed, of money, of success, comfort, materialism, pleasure, sexual immorality, self-worship, self-obsession. The sacred increasingly disappeared, and the profane took its place. — Jonathan Cahn

The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God. — John Ortberg

None of them, not even he, seemed to realize they weren't just physical beings, that God had left a mark upon them by the simple fact of his creation. They preferred their idols, tangible, possessing, capricious characteristics like themselves, easily understood. They wanted something they could manipulate. God was inconceivable, intangible, incomprehensible, unexploitable. — Francine Rivers

My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.
My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith. — Ibn Arabi

We're not encouraging idols other than on the TV show, you know and that's the wrong way to do it. If we had become famous from a contest show we'd be embarrassed in my generation. But if that's the benchmark then I thought well young people who want to be filmmakers, or musicians, or whatever are screwed. But maybe they're not because what they're doing is they're creating their own thing. — Billy Bob Thornton

I always wear rings and cuffs from Made Her Think because designer Meredith Kahn is my friend and is one of my fashion idols. Everything she creates is really fresh. — Jessie Baylin

When I look at the multitude of the gods of the past held in esteem by great civilisations now cast aside as pagan idols, I wonder wether tomorrow the gods we hold in high esteem won't suffer the same fate. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people. — Marilyn Monroe

It's unfashionable these days to talk about sin, and it's even less fashionable to talk about idolatry. The world likes to tell us that we're beyond that now. When we honestly discuss the sinful attitudes behind our actions, we are often shushed: "You're not that bad! Everyone does those things! You need to have better self esteem!" But the human heart is the same now as it was in biblical times. We don't have to bow down to a golden statue to worship idols. When we trust in anything other than God for peace and happiness we are essentially practicing idolatry. Only when we see the idols yet in our hearts can we truly "put off the old self" and "put on the new self" (Colossians 3:5-10). — Staci Eastin

The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed. — Voltaire

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness. — Democritus

Superstitions and eccentric habits are a Western substitute for actual idols. — Edward T. Welch

For although greed of itself is idolatry, there was still the additional worship of the idols, or . Rachel — Martin Luther

The best advice I could give is be yourself. Before I was on the American Idol show I made goals for myself. I said, "Who do I want to be, and what will I compromise, or won't I compromise?" And then, I stuck with that. — Carmen Rasmusen

Whatever you love more than God is your idol. — Dwight L. Moody

An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman. — Joseph Addison

On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice. — Albert Camus

Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we're in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. Snowman longs to question them - who first had the idea of making a reasonable facsimile of him, of Snowman, out of a jar lid and a mop? But that will have to wait. — Margaret Atwood

What Marxism calls atheism is basically the negation of an idol, which sometimes bears the name of God. — Ernesto Cardenal

The modern world is not given to uncritical admiration. It expects its idols to have feet of clay and can be reasonably sure that the press and camera will report their exact dimensions. — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

Bishop John Wilkins commented in 1638 on these Athenians: Those zealous idolators [counted] it a great blasphemy to make their God a stone, whereas notwithstanding they were so senseless in their adoration of idols as to make a stone their God. — Carl Sagan

That makes entertaining television. That is the circus of American Idol . We go for the very, very best and the very, very worst. It's the boring people that we don't want to see on television. — Nigel Lythgoe

I think I would fan over Beyonce or Adele. Those are my two girl idols, definitely. — Ella Henderson

I need to keep my dancing on the right side of weird, otherwise it might get a bit like "American Idol." — Matthew Healy

We have strayed from the Immortal's ways And worship with a dull and senseless mind Idols, the workmanship of our own hands, And images and figures of dead men. — Justin Martyr

When we do not adore God, we adore something else. Money and power are false idols which often take the place of God. — Pope Francis

The loving and much loved wife is satisfied with the love of her husband; his smile is her joy, she cares little for any other. So, if you have come to Christ, thy Maker is thine husband - His free love to you is all you need, and all you can care for - there is no cloud between you and God - there is no veil between you and the Father; you have access to Him who is the fountain of happiness - what have you to do any more with idols? Oh! If your heart swims in the rays of God's love, like a little mote swimming in the sunbeam, you will have no room in your heart for idols. — Robert E. Murray

My idols are Richard Dreyfuss, Michael Keaton, John Goodman. Maybe that's what I want for me. — Breckin Meyer

Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin. — William Stringfellow

I look at couples in the street who are in their sixties and have been together for 40 years, and they're my idols. That's Ice and me for sure. — Coco Austin

If I was ever a teen idol, I'd kill myself. — Jared Leto

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish. — Pope John Paul II

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.
(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.) — Gustave Flaubert

Men show no mercy and expect no mercy, when honor calls, or when they fight for their idols or their gods. — Friedrich Schiller

There is iconoclasm in the excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength. — Paul Bourget

There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy! — Anton Szandor LaVey

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

Pastors must practice a two-fold program of cultural engagement: deconstruction and demystification of cultural idols, and reconstruction and re-enchantment of a gospel-shaped worldview. — Timothy Keller

Idols tend to be good things that you have turned into god things, which therefore become bad things — Mark Driscoll

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols — Aldous Huxley

Women aren't interested in being sexy any more and men are. All the guys have objectified themselves and sexualised themselves into being just matinee idols. — Ryan Gosling

In the past, I had my idols but today I enjoy learning from all the soccer I watch. — Andres Iniesta

this is actualy a poem

we have been called
naive
as if it were a dirty word,
whe have been called
innocent
as though with shame
our cheeks should burn
so
we visit with
the careful idols
of cynisism
to learn to sneer
and pant and walk
so as not to feel the scales
of judgement rub wrongly
but we say
some things must
remain simple
some things must remain
untouched
and pure
lest we all forget
the legacy we begot us
the health of our origins
the poetry of our fundemental selves — Jewel

I do have a memo all the time because I need to be guided by something in my life. I'm not religious and I don't have idols, so something has to drive me. — Marina And The Diamonds

My idol was Johann Cruyff (a Dutch soccer player) and I wanted to be like him. But when I realized that I would never be, I decided to do something else. I met the kitchen by chance and quickly became completely enamoured by it. — Ferran Adria

I get tips from Bob Gaudio. And one of my songs somehow caught the attention of one of my idols, Marty Panzer, who wrote big hits for Barry Manilow. So two guys who inspired me to write lyrics are now teaching me to write. — Erich Bergen

A Christian is someone who has turned to God from idols. — Billy Graham

Isn't it strange that what we call "self" doesn't really constitute of our "own". It consists of parts and bits of so many people around us! People who helped us, people who laughed with us, people who wiped our tears, people who walked with us, people whom we looked up to as idols, people who silently followed us, people who hated us, people who challenged us! We are a net integral of all these, isn't it? — Neelam Saxena Chandra

The gospel has supernatural versatility to address the particular hopes, fears, and idols of every culture and every person. — Timothy Keller

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

It is much better to tell the truth than to compromise truth and have someone believe a lie. It is far better they hear the truth now than that they believe they can keep other idols in their life - and then one day, when it's too late, shockingly hear the Master say, "Depart; I never knew you, you who were deceived! — John Bevere

I have both Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as my idols. If I can take a little of each player's game and make it my own, I would be very happy, — Neymar

When men drive God's word from them he justly permits their delusions, and answers them according to the multitude of their idols. — Matthew Henry

You speak of the hand of Fatma, my friends, but you do not know the terrible power of this hand, the hand of monsters that menace you and seduce you with their subterranean access, their metallic splintering, their inhuman grotesqueness of idols. — Georges Limbour

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can - and should - also be people who confront. What is not confessed can't be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: "I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols" (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn't discount someone who "has something against you," labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do. — Henry Cloud

It's great to get to work with your idols. — Joel Kinnaman

Concepts create idols; only wonder grasps anything. — Gregory Of Nyssa

I find artists like Tim Barry, Cory Branan, and Jenny Owen Youngs, these current artists that are doing what they're doing now are my idols, my generation's incredible songwriters. I've listened to so much music on the whole ride and I'm inspired by a lot of classic artists, but it's the people right next to me singing songs that are blowing my mind, if that makes any sense. — Chuck Ragan

Tis easy to break an idol, very easy: to regard the self as easy to subdue is folly, folly. — Rumi

Christians agree that when we sell and market, we need to show potential customers that a product "adds value" to their lives. That doesn't mean it can give them a life. But because Christians have a deeper understanding of human well-being, we will often find ourselves swimming against the very strong currents of the corporate idols of our culture. — Timothy Keller

Twentieth-century culture's disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movies, theater, pop idols and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in the reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead. — Jim Morrison

Left to our own devices, we will make God in our own image. — Jared Brock

There's one thing I remember about Muhammad Ali. He said "I don't like my condition, but if this is what the Good Lord has planned for me to deal with, I'm happy with that." You have to understand, that comes from my idol, one of the guys that got me started in boxing. — Roy Jones Jr.

Most of what is wrong in horizontal church flows from attempts to get green apples interested in Jesus. Green apples are very articulate about that they do and don't want in church. They don't want to hear about money, because that is one of their idols; they don't want to be told about sin, because that assaults pride; no interest in pressure to decide for Jesus, because that threatens their autonomy. Sadly when church becomes what green apples must have or they won't come. It ceases to be what it must be for God to attend. Church needs to be offensive to green apples or it can be helpful to those who are ripe. — James MacDonald

The Human heart is an idol factory. — John Calvin

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

A saint is Christ's bride, totally attached, faithful, dependent. A saint is also totally independent, detached from idols and from other husbands ... A saint is higher than anyone else in the world. A saint is the real mountain climber. A saint is also lower than anyone else in the world. As with water, he flows to the lowest places - like Calcutta. — Peter Kreeft

Well, we're just a couple of weeks from new President Barack Obama being sworn in. And he's been very busy naming a lot of cabinet positions. And today he announced that he wants the surgeon general to be TV Dr. Sanjay Gupta. That was the kid on 'American Idol,' wasn't it? — David Letterman

When I watched American Idol, I always thought Simon was the most realistic. Simon's like, It was absolutely horrid. That's what they tell in the music industry. — Toni Braxton