quotations about prophets and prophecy
The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
Creativity and spirituality function on the same side of the brain. If that is true, it is quite reasonable and natural for them to function together. The prophets and mystics we're obviously aware of this connection.
DAVID BRAZZEAL
Pray Like a Gourmet: Creative Ways to Feed Your Soul
Oh Jerusalem, the fragrance of prophets
The shortest path between earth and sky
NIZAR QABBANI
Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance
Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.
SHANE CLAIBORNE
The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Prophecy is not an art, nor (when it is taken for prediction) a constant vocation, but an extraordinary and temporary employment from God, most often of good men, but sometimes also of the wicked.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Future of the Theater
Let any one speak long enough, he will get believers.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Master of Ballantrae
The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.
BIBLE
Jeremiah 14:14
We are not here to make divisions in the name of prophets and religions. We are here to encompass the world with love and light.
AMIT RAY
Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
Coming events cast their shadows before.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
A prophet is always much wider than his followers, much more liberal than those who label themselves with his name.
ANNIE BESANT
Annie Besant: The Life and Teachings of Muhammad
Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?"
JESUS
Matthew 7:16
I tell you the truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
The Devil and the Good Lord
Every prophet is a reformer. Woe to the prophetless culture, for it has no one to tell it when it's headed to destruction, and guide it back to safety.
WALLACE HENLEY
"How Today's Liberals Are Like the Puritans and Pharisees of Old", Christian Post, May 29, 2016
It must be excellent to be a prophet, if people do whatever you say. So I spent a brief time wondering ... how one became a prophet ... and if there were any negative aspects to a prophet's calling. Having a flotilla of docile adherents was all very well, but prophethood would not be so fine if one was required to practice overzealous chastity or to cut one's heart in a ritual manner at the coming of winter. On the other hand, if one simply declared, "I am prophet," and people bent themselves obsequiously to fulfill your slightest whim ... that would not be a bad profession.
JAMES ALAN GARDNER
Ascending
To know what will come is the same as to make it so.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. God speaks, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.
HEINRICH HEINE
"Lutetia; or, Paris", Augsberg Gazette, 1842
Prophecy resideth not but in a man who is great in wisdom and virtue.
MAIMONIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon