Obedience Quotes

There is a rich literature on how to break out of quandary thinking. It suggests that sometimes it helps to turn from the abstract to the concrete.

~ Sherry Turkle

The word Ilaah means something that deserves to be worshiped AND obeyed at the same time. It is not enough to worship Allah through rituals. We have to give His obedience precedence over our desires in every situation of our life.

~ Nouman Ali Khan

This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is right. At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience to righteous precept.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

~ Adam Johnson

Only he who cries out for the persecuted Jews can sing Gregorian chants. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

~ Jen Pollock Michel

It is, I think, a far lesser offense to blatantly ignore God’s directions for our lives rather than arrogantly think ourselves shrewd enough to be able to bend them to our liking without breaking them and therefore breaking ourselves.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

A sworn sworn owes his liege our service and obedience, but this is madness.

~ George R.r. Martin

People often find comfort in ignorance of illusions, but rarely find solace in the truth of reality.

~ Lionel Suggs

Schooling is a manufacturing process whereby the raw material called curious boys is turned into products called obedient men.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When we're not following God's will, our sacrifices aren't acceptable to Him. What God wants most is for us to be broken before Him, walk with Him, know Him, and obey Him.

~ Sarah Sundin

As Ernest Becker observes in The Denial of Death, the very thought of disobeying authority appears to awaken the anxiety connected with the possible loss, during infancy, of parental love, respect or support. The unexamined beliefs and experiences that generate our reliance on, and deference to authority, seem rooted in a profound existential uncertainty: the patient looks to the doctor to relieve this uncertainty, not only about not feeling well and not knowing why, but also about not knowing what to do, what action to undertake. In other words, the expertise of the physician relieves the patient of some of the burden of responsibility.

~ Daniel Waterman

Obedience is less painful than regret.

~ Christine Caine

Spray a bug with a toxin and it dies; spray a man, spray his brain, and he becomes an insect that clacks and vibrates about in a closed circle forever. A reflex machine, like an ant. Repeating his last instruction.

~ Philip K. Dick

Sol wanted to know how any ethical system – much less a religion so indomitable that it had survived every evil mankind could throw at it – could flow from a command from God for a man to slaughter his son. It did not matter to Sol that the command had been rescinded at the last moment. It did not matter that the command was a test of obedience. In fact, the idea that it was the obedience of Abraham which allowed him to become the father of all the tribes of Israel was precisely what drove Sol into fits of fury.

~ Dan Simmons

... primitive times had required primitive obedience, that later generations evolved to the point where parents offered themselves as sacrifice - as in the dark knights of the ovens which pocked old earth history - and that current generations had to deny any command for sacrifice. Sol had written that whatever God now took in human consciousness - whether as a mere manifestation of the subconscious in all its revanchist needs or as a more conscious attempt at philosophical and ethical evolution - humankind could no longer agree to offer up sacrifice in God's name. Sacrifice and the agreement to sacrifice had written human history in blood.

~ Dan Simmons

You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.

~ Eric Liddell

My focus was on trying to figure out what God wanted be to do next. Their (his parents') focus was on what I was doing for God at the moment.

~ Jeremy Camp

The sweet spot is where duty and delight converge.

~ Thomas Mann

The author tells a story wherein a missionary friend of his was invited by unbelievers on a train ride to play cards. The friend declined, saying that he did not bring his hands with him. He explained to the astonished group that the hands attached to what they saw as his body belonged to the Lord, and he was thereby able to explain the Gospel.

~ Watchman Nee

Jesus enters the garden, in preparation, intending to face his fears by facing his God, his Father, His greatest fear is to offend his Father, to disobey his own calling, its integrity, and the word of God on his life.

~ Megan Mckenna

We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than observance. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world, it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allowed to starve.

~ Dorothee Sölle

Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

~ T.h. White

Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God.

~ Oswald Chambers

Obedience is a foundational stepping-stone on the path of God’s will.

~ Elizabeth George

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....

~ Noam Chomsky

The mechanical clock was self-contained, and once horologists learned to drive it by means of a coiled spring rather than a falling weight, it could be miniaturized so as to be portable, whether in the household or on the person. It was this possibility of widespread private use that laid the basis for 'time discipline,' as against 'time obedience.' One can ... use public clocks to simon people for one purpose or another; but that is not punctuality. Punctuality comes from within, not from without. It is the mechanical clock that made possible, for better or worse, a civilization attentive to the passage of time, hence to productivity and performance.

~ David S. Landes

You don’t need to understand. You need only to obey and then reap the blessings of that obedience.

~ Jim George

In the matters of your life don't take orders, take decisions.

~ Amit Kalantri

We can't make you do anything, but we can make you wish you had. - Army saying

~ Stephen E. Ambrose

When he thought about how he had been slighted, condescended to, manipulated and deceived, he became angry. Obedience was a monastic virtue, but outside the cloisters it had its drawbacks, he thought bitterly. The world of power and property demanded that a man be suspicious, demanding, and insistent.

~ Ken Follett

Whenever the conviction of God’s Spirit comes there is the softening of the whole nature to obey, but if the obedience is not instant there will come a metallic hardening and a corrupting of the guidance of God.

~ Oswald Chambers

Now it is easy to perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment, engendered by society, and cried up by the women with great care and address in order to establish their empire, and secure command to that sex which ought to obey.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For Bonhoeffer, the relationship with God ordered everything else around it. A number of times he referred to the relationship with Jesus Christ as being like the cantus firmus of a piece of music. All the other parts of the music referred to it, and it held them together. To be true to God in the deepest way meant having such a relationship with him that one did not live legalistically by rules or principles. One could never separate one's actions from one's relationship to God. It was a more demanding and more mature level of obedience, and Bonhoeffer had come to see that the evil of Hitler was forcing Christians to go deeper in their obedience, to think harder about what God was asking. Legalistic religion was being shown to be utterly inadequate.

~ Eric Metaxas

There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must be not attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.

~ Sun Tzu

..tithing isn't something I do to clear my conscience so I can do whatever I want with the 90 percent--it also belongs to God! I must seek his direction and permission for whatever I do with the full amount. I may discover that God has different ideas than I do.

~ Randy Alcorn

Obedience to God will bring blessings to you and others.

~ Jim George

No, we are not defeated; we are simply disobedient! It might be good if we stopped using the terms 'victory' and 'defeat' to describe our progress in holiness. Rather we should use the terms 'obedience' and 'disobedience.

~ Jerry Bridges

As our faith grows and we come to know more about the attributes of God and his role in our lives and our obedience, we learn to see our weakness in light of these words, For is it God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).

~ Hayley Dimarco

In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—-well, not even the young anymore—-need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning “to listen, or to give ear to.” It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren’t really very good listeners.

~ Heather Choate Davis

You don't want captains in the army who know too much or think too much.

~ Robert Graves