professes QUOTES

1 " It is obvious that the concept of truth has become suspect. Of course it is correct that is has been much abused. Intolerance and cruelty have occurred in the name of truth. To that extent people are afraid when someone says, " This is the truth" , or even " I have the truth" . We never have it, at best is has us. No one will dispute that one must be careful and cautious in claiming the truth. But simply to dismiss it as unattainable is really destructive.(...) We must have the courage to dare to say: Yes, man must seek the truth; he is capable of truth. It goes without saying that truth requires criteria for verification and falsification. It must always be accompanied by tolerance, also. But then truth also points out to us those constant values which have made mankind great. That is why the humility to recognize the truth and to accept it as a standard has to be relearned and practiced again. The truth comes to rule, not through violence, but rather through its own power; this is the central theme of John's Gospel: When brought before Pilate, Jesus professes that he himself is The Truth and the witness to the truth. He does not defend the truth with legions but rather makes it visible through his Passion and thereby also implements it. "

2 " Life doesn’t have a singular purpose and yet we try to pigeonhole this infinite gift by searching for a single meaning behind our existence. We hunger for meaning the way a starving man does food—convinced we will waste away without it. As though to experience what it is to be alive weren’t enough to justify drawing breath. Life is a multi-layered practice in exploration, self-definition, connection, and realization.
The greatest challenge presented to us as human beings is to allow the infinite to be infinite; to accept that we will always be the student never the teacher, and allow the truths we’ve gathered to evolve because what we seek to understand is a living thing and is in a perpetual state of change. Humanity’s progression of understanding is open-ended. Anyone who professes mastery only shows their ignorance of the infinite procession of enlightenment of which they are a part. Each of us get to add a line into the coverless tome of understanding, which has no beginning and no end. "

― L.M. Browning

3 " An ironic religion -- one that never claims to be absolutely true but only professes to be relatively beautiful, and never promises salvation but only proposes it as a salubrious idea. A century ago there were people who thought art was the thing that could fuse the terms of this seemingly insuperable oxymoron, and no doubt art is part of the formula. But maybe consumerism also has something to teach us about forging an ironic religion -- a lesson about learning to choose, about learning the power and consequences, for good or ill, of our ever-expanding palette of choices. Perhaps . . . the day will come when the true ironic religion is found, the day when humanity is filled with enough love and imagination and responsibility to become its own god and make a paradise of its world, a paradise of all the right choices. "

― Alex Shakar , The Savage Girl

4 " Suppose... that you acquit me... Suppose that, in view of this, you said to me 'Socrates, on this occasion we shall disregard Anytus and acquit you, but only on one condition, that you give up spending your time on this quest and stop philosophizing. If we catch you going on in the same way, you shall be put to death.' Well, supposing, as I said, that you should offer to acquit me on these terms, I should reply 'Gentlemen, I am your very grateful and devoted servant, but I owe a greater obedience to God than to you; and so long as I draw breath and have my faculties, I shall never stop practicing philosophy and exhorting you and elucidating the truth for everyone that I meet. I shall go on saying, in my usual way, " My very good friend, you are an Athenian and belong to a city which is the greatest and most famous in the world for its wisdom and strength. Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?" And if any of you disputes this and professes to care about these things, I shall not at once let him go or leave him; no, I shall question him and examine him and test him; and if it appears that in spite of his profession he has made no real progress towards goodness, I shall reprove him for neglecting what is of supreme importance, and giving his attention to trivialities. I shall do this to everyone that I meet, young or old, foreigner or fellow-citizen; but especially to you my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as you are closer to me in kinship. This, I do assure you, is what my God commands; and it is my belief that no greater good has ever befallen you in this city than my service to my God; for I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as I go 'Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the State.' ...And so, gentlemen, I would say, 'You can please yourselves whether you listen to Anytus or not, and whether you acquit me or not; you know that I am not going to alter my conduct, not even if I have to die a hundred deaths. "

5 " It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion—as distinct from a transient fit of appetite—that makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires makes promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seems to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain. At the very thought of such a doom we sink into fathomless depths of self-pity.

Unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue. Every experienced adult knows this to be so as regards all erotic passions (except the one he himself is feeling at the moment). We discount the world-without-end pretensions of our friends’ amours easily enough. We know that such things sometimes last—and sometimes don’t. And when they do last, this is not because they promised at the outset to do so. When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people.

If we establish a “right to (sexual) happiness” which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior, we do so not because of what our passion shows itself to be in experience but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it. "

― C.S. Lewis , God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

6 " Take that absurd fool Elipas Levi who was supposed to be the Grand High Whatnot in Victorian times. Did you ever read his book, The Doctrine and Ritual of Magic? In his introduction he professes that he is going to tell you all about the game and that he’s written a really practical book, by the aid of which anybody who likes can raise the devil, and perform all sorts of monkey tricks. He drools on for hundreds of pages about fiery swords and tetragrams and the terrible aqua poffana, but does he tell you anything? Not a blessed thing. Once it comes to a showdown he hedges like the crook he was and tells you that such mysteries are far too terrible and dangerous to be entrusted to the profane. Mysterious balderdash my friend. I’m going to have a good strong nightcap and go to bed. "

― Dennis Wheatley , The Devil Rides Out (Black Magic, #1)

7 " If it were true love, he would never make you sacrifice your dignity to be with him. He would respect you and treat you as if you were sacred to his heart. If he loved you as dearly as he professes to love Christ, then he would never let anyone that loved him suffer or lower their self worth to be with him. True love is compassion, respect and honorable acts that prove love. "

― Shannon L. Alder

8 " The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation. "

― Adam Smith , The Theory of Moral Sentiments

9 " This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. " There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth! "

10 " This is a nation that professes to be a Christian nation," [Suelo] tells me, surveying his temporary kingdom. " And yet it's basically illegal to live according to the teachings of Jesus. "

11 " Man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion—and not only a capacity, for the vast majority of the human race practices or professes some form of religion. "

― Billy Graham , Billy Graham in Quotes

12 " The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine "

― Adam Smith , The Theory of Moral Sentiments

13 " When one person comes into contact with another, it is not simply coming together of person rather it is the first and the most important phase of coming together of humanity whether it is you and me or you and us or we and you friends. Unless it is engulfed by love and humanity the two qualifies which everybody professes or the eternal qualities essential for creating heaven in this very earth, which however, seems to be the most lacking in the present day traumatic situation of unhappiness, sorrows, woeful conditions, jealousies, hasted, abhorrence and so on, it will be simply wastage of the precious humanity. "

14 " She spoke about it with such emphasis (somewhat affected) that I could see at once that I was hearing the manifesto of her generation. Every generation has its own set of passions, loves, and interests, which it professes with a certain tenacity, to differentiate it from older generations and to confirm itself in its uniqueness. Submitting to a generation mentality (to this pride of the herd) has always repelled me. After Miss Broz had developed her provocative argument (I've now heard it at least fifty times from people her age) that all mankind is divided into those who give hitchhikers lifts (human people who love adventure) and those who don't (inhuman people who fear life), I jokingly called her a " dogmatist of the hitch." She answered sharply that she was neither dogmatist nor revisionist nor sectarian nor deviationist, that those were all words of ours, that we had invented them, that they belonged to us, and that they were completely alien to them. "

15 " Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. "

― John Stuart Mill , On Liberty

16 " 1. Santa Claus is real. However, your parents are folkloric constructs meant to protect and foritfy children against the darknesses of the real world. They are symbols representing the return of the sun and the end of winter, the sacrifice of the king and the eternal fecundity of the queen. They wear traditional vestments and are associated with certain seasonal plants, animals, and foods. After a certain age, no intelligent child continues believing in their parents, and it is embarrassing when one professes such faith after puberty. Santa Claus, however, will never fail us. "

― Catherynne M. Valente

17 " Oh yes. It's open all right, but not many people come in here to look at me now so there's no point in selling tickets. No one is interested in a man who professes to be a monster. They'll give me notice very soon. I started out being a great attraction, but people soon understood that what fascinated them about me was no more than the reflection of their own deformities. All I do is how them what is inside themselves,' He added mournfully. "

― Isobelle Carmody , Greylands

18 " And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. "

― Ayn Rand , The Fountainhead

19 " Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of the United Nations, the unreliability of Europe, the perfidy of the Third World and the need for nuclear defense policy? Question: Which Mediterranean government is Ronald Reagan trying, with the help of George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, to replace with a government led by a party which professes socialism and which contains extreme leftists?

If you answered 'the government of Israel' to both of the above, you know more about political and international irony than the President does. "

― Christopher Hitchens

20 " But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun —wherever he looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools, the most powerful engines of knowledge ; to him they are, if not actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear, and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties, here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not, and that again will cease to be ; this life is a short dream from which we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that certainly it is not here. "

― F. Max Müller , India: What it Can Teach Us

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