quotations about prophets and prophecy
Either the images of the prophetic style have constant and proper relations to the events of the world, as the words of common speech have proper and constant meanings--or they have not. If they have, then it seems no less difficult to conceive that many events should be shadowed under the images of one and the same prophecy, than that several likenesses should be expressed in a single portrait. But, if the prophetic images have no such appropriate relations to things, but that the same image may stnd for many things, and various events be included in a single prediction, then it should seem that prophecy, thus indefinite in its meaning, can afford no proof of providence: for it should seem possible, that a prophecy of this sort, by whatever principle the world were governed, whether by providence, nature, or necessity, might owe a seeming completion to mere accident.
SAMUEL HORSLEY
Sermons
Prophecy and prescience--How can they be put to the test in the face of unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction ... and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What are the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of the knife?
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
As it was, deformed and made mad by his hellish life, he had become what prophets had probably always been: not frauds, for they themselves believed what they had seen, but pitiful creatures, dreaming some salvation from this crushing world in their malfunctioning brains.
JAMIL NASIR
Tower of Dreams
If miracles represent prophecy, we must have more prophets in twenty first century than the entire human history.
M. F. MOONZAJER
attributed, tumblr
We can always be sure of one thing--that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
No wonder God chose this dark land to send prophets to, for a candle only shines in the dark.
RAMI OLLAIK
The Bees Road
A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.
JESUS
Matthew 13:57