Patti Lynn Clark Barnett

From the Davinci Code, to Madonna’s recent blasphemous performance (an obviously pathetic scream for attention), it is increasingly clear this really is, “Open Season” on Jesus. No doubt, there is a concerted and dedicated effort in some quarters to create a God free society and eradicate any vestige or reference to God or the Bible from the public square. In sharp contrast, these quotes about the Bible from some of the world’s greatest minds reflect an appreciation and understanding of the Bible's positive influence on society as well as the detrimental effects on any society without it.


There is no book like the Bible for excellent wisdom and use. -Sir M. Hale.

The philosophers, as Varro tells us, counted up three hundred and twenty answers to the question, "What is the supreme good?" How needful, then, is a divine revelation, to make plain what is the true end of our being. -Tyron Edwards.

There never was found, in any age of the world, either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible. -Bacon.

The Bible is a window in this prison of hope, through which we look into eternity. -Dwight.

The Bible is the light of my under­standing, the joy of my heart, the full­ness of my hope, the clarifier of my af­fections, the mirror of my thoughts, the consoler of my sorrows, the guide of my soul through this gloomy labyrinth of time, the telescope sent from heaven to reveal to the eye of man the amaz­ing glories of the far distant world. The Bible contains more true sub­limity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they may have been written. -Sir Wm. Jones.

In what light so ever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revela­tion, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue. -J. Q. Adams.

Bad men or devils would not have written the Bible, for it condemns them and their works, -good men or angels could not have written it, for in saying it was from God when it was but their own invention, they would have been guilty of falsehood, and thus could not have been good. The only remaining being who could have written it, is God -its real author. The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying. -Flavel.

There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion; no orations equal to those of the prophets; and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach. -­Milton.

It is a belief in the Bible, the fruit of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. -I have found it a capital safely invested, and richly productive of inter­est. -Goethe.

The longer you read the Bible, the more you will like it; it will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more you get into the spirit of it, the more you will get into the spirit of Christ. ­Romaine.

I have always said, I always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands. -Jefferson.

Men cannot be well educated without the Bible. -E. Nott.

The general diffusion of the Bible is the most effectual way to civilize and humanize mankind; to purify and exalt the general system of public morals; to give efficacy to the just precepts of in­ternational and municipal law; to en­force the observance of prudence, tem­perance, justice and fortitude; and to improve all the relations of social and domestic life. -Chancellor Kent.

Scholars may quote Plato in their studies, but the hearts of millions will quote the Bible at their daily toil, and draw strength from its inspiration, as the meadows draw it from the brook. -­Conway.

The Bible goes equally to the cottage of the peasant, and the palace of the king.-It is woven into literature, and colors the talk of the street.-The bark of the merchant cannot sail without it; and no ship of war goes to the conflict but it is there.-It enters men's closets; directs their conduct, and mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. -Theodore Parker.

The Bible is one of the greatest bless­ings bestowed by God on the children of men. -It has God for its author; sal­vation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. -It is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting. -Locke.

The man of one book is always for­midable; but when that book is the Bible he is irresistible. -W. M. Taylor.

To say nothing of its holiness or authority, the Bible contains more speci­mens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence. -Landor.

So great is my veneration for the Bible, that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country and respectable members of society. -J. Q. Adams.

The incongruity of the Bible with the age of its birth; its freedom from earthly mixtures; its original, unborrowed, solitary greatness; the suddenness with which it broke forth amidst the general gloom; these, to me, are strong indica­tions of its Divine descent: I cannot reconcile them with a human origin. -Channing.

I believe that the Bible is to be under­stood and received in the plain and ob­vious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book in­tended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it. -Daniel Webster.

The Gospel is not merely a book -it is a living power -a book surpassing all others. -I never omit to read it, and every day with the same pleasure. No­where is to be found such a series of beautiful ideas, and admirable moral maxims, which pass .before us like the battalions of a celestial army. . . The soul can never go astray with this book for its guide. -Napoleon on St. Helena.

In this little book (the New Testa­ment), is contained all the wisdom of the world. -Ewald.

All the distinctive features and superi­ority of our republican institutions are derived from the teachings of Scripture. -Everett.

Just as all things upon earth represent and image forth all the realities of an­other world, so the Bible is one mighty representative of the whole spiritual life of humanity. -Helen Keller.

Voltaire spoke of the Bible as a short ­lived book. He said that within a hun­dred years it would pass from common use. Not many people read Voltaire to-day, but his house has been packed with Bibles as a depot of a Bible society. -Bruce Barton.

I cannot too greatly emphasize the importance and value of Bible study ­more important than ever before in these days of uncertainties, when men and women are apt to decide questions from the standpoint of expediency rather than on the eternal principles laid down by God, Himself. -John Wanamaker.

When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness and your own duty. -Woodrow Wilson.

No lawyer can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.-Rufus Choate.

I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valu­able than a college course without a Bible. -William Lyon Phelps.

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine-but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righte­ously. -Sir Arthur Keith

All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book.­ -David Livingstone.

I have always believed in the inspira­tion of the Holy Scriptures, whereby they have become the expression to man of the Word and Will of God .-Warren G. Harding.

The Holy Bible is not only great but high explosive literature. It works in strange ways and no living man can tell or know how that book in its journey­ings through the world has started an individual soul 10,000 different places into a new life, a new belief, a new con­ception and a new faith. -Stanley Bald­win.

It has been truly said that any trans­lation of the masterpiece (the Bible) must be a failure. -E. J. Goodspeed.

To my early knowledge of the Bible I owe the best part of my taste in litera­ture, and the most precious, and on the whole, the one essential part of my edu­cation. -Ruskin.

Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, com­pared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime .should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero. -Rousseau.

The morality of the Bible is, after all, the safety of society. -F. C. Monfort.

The Bible rose to the place it now occupies because it deserved to rise to that place, and not because God sent anybody with a box of tricks to prove its divine authority. -Bruce Barton.

The Bible, thoroughly known, is lit­erature in itself - the rarest and richest in all departments of thought and im­agination which exists. -James Anthony Froude.

That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in every human being; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the do­mestic, civil, and social relations; that they teach men to love right, and hate wrong, and seek each other's welfare as children of a common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the heart, and thus make men proficient in self­ government; and finally that they teach man to aspire after conformity to a being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes more purifying, exalted, and suited to his nature than any other book the world has ever known these are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philoso­phy, or the demonstrations of mathe­matics. -F. Wayland.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history what­ever. -Isaac Newton.

Of the Bible, says Garibaldi, "This is the cannon that will make Italy free." Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and still man's obligations to God would be unchanged. -He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and his guide would be gone; -the same voyage to make, but his chart and com­pass would be overboard. -H. W. Beecher.

I know the Bible is inspired because it finds me at greater depths of my being than any other book. -Coleridge.

The highest earthly enjoyments are but a shadow of the joy I find in reading God's word. -Lady Jane Grey.

They who are not induced to believe and live as they ought by those dis­coveries which God hath made in Scrip­ture, would stand out against any evi­dence whatever; even that of a mes­senger sent express from the other world. -Atterbury.

Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? That is the book you want to study while you are living. There is but one such book in the world. -Joseph Cook.

Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet ­anchor of your liberties; write its pre­cepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives. To the influence of this book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as our guide in the future. "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people." -U. S. Grant.

The most learned, acute, and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, ob­tain an entire knowledge of this one volume. The more deeply he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he finds the ore; new light continually beams from this source of heavenly knowledge, to direct the conduct, and illustrate the work of God and the ways of men; and he will at last leave the world confessing, that the more he stud­ied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction he had of his own ignorance, and of their inestimable value. -Walter Scott.

Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insig­nificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality.­ –Daniel Webster

A noble book! All men's book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem-man's destiny, and God's ways with him here on earth; and all in such free-flowing outlines, -­grand in its sincerity; in its simplicity and its epic melody. -Carlyle.

One monarch to obey, one creed to own; that monarch God; that creed his word alone.

If there is any one fact or doctrine, or command, or promise in the Bible which has produced no practical effect on your temper, or heart, or conduct, be assured you do not truly believe it. -Payson.

There is a Book worth all other books which were ever printed .-Patrick Henry.

The Bible furnishes the only fitting vehicle to express the thoughts that over­whelm us when contemplating the stellar universe. -O. M. Mitchell.

The grand old Book of God still stands, and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the sacred Word. -James Dwight Dana.

In my investigation of natural science, I have always found that, whenever I can meet with anything in the Bible on my subjects, it always affords me a firm platform on which to stand. -Mathew F. Maury.

It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the ground­work of human freedom. -Horace Gree­ley.

The word of God will stand a thou­sand readings; and he who has gone over it most frequently is the surest of find­ing new wonders there.-J. Hamilton.

Holy Scripture is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb walk without losing its feet. -Gregory the Great.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district­,all studied and appreciated as they merit are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty. -Franklin.

The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever growing influence of the Bible. -William H. Seward.

The Bible is the only cement of na­tions, and the only cement that can bind religious hearts together. -Bunsen.

All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths that come from on high and are contained in the sacred writings. -Herschel.

After all, the Bible must be its own argument and defense. The power of it can never be proved unless it is felt. The authority of it can never be sup­ported unless it is manifest. The light of it can never be demonstrated unless it shines. -H. J. Van Dyke.

You never get to the end of Christ's words. There is something in them al­ways behind. They pass into proverbs, into laws, into doctrines, into consola­tions; but they never pass away, and after all the use that is made of them they are still not exhausted. -A. P. Stanley.

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. -Spurgeon.

After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle, we feel that the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation. -Joseph Parker.

A loving trust in the Author of the Bible is the best preparation for a wise and profitable study of the Bible itself. -­H. C. Trumbull.

I have read the Bible through many times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year.-It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct. -Daniel Webster.

So far as I have observed God's deal­ings with my soul, the flights of preach­ers sometimes entertained me, but it was Scripture expressions which did pene­trate my heart, and in a way peculiar to themselves. -John Brown.

A man may read the figures on the dial, but he cannot tell how the day goes unless the sun is shining on it; so we may read the Bible over, but we cannot learn to purpose till the spirit of God shine upon it and into our hearts. -T. Watson.

There is no book on which we can rest in a dying moment but the Bible.­ -Selden.

The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, with­out being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost to us. -Thomas Adams.