Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.
Girolamo SavonarolaRead
Whoever excommunicates me, excommunicates God.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that one's authority to judge others should be scrutinized, as true moral authority comes from a higher power.
Girolamo Savonarola's quote reflects a profound assertion about the nature of excommunication and authority in spiritual and moral contexts. By stating that whoever excommunicates him is also excommunicating God, Savonarola emphasizes the connection between divine authority and human judgment, challenging the validity of any authority that would exclude him from the community of believers. It speaks to the idea that true righteousness cannot be claimed by those who act without divine sanction and portrays the struggle between individual conscience and institutional power.
Themes
ExcommunicationAuthorityDivineJudgmentMorality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a debate about religious authority during a lecture on Renaissance thinkers.
More from Girolamo Savonarola
All quotes βSimilar quotes
Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don't like the way things are, they aren't interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.
Bertrand RussellRead
Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
Haruki MurakamiRead
Sometimes you get the cynical person saying, 'Do we really need another book set in Nazi Germany?' But I think you just have to ask, 'Is this a story worth telling?'
Markus ZusakRead
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
William ShakespeareRead
Stories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.
John HodgmanRead
The definition of 'morbid' is an unhealthy preoccupation with death. Unfortunately, there's no word to mean the perfectly healthy preoccupation with death, which is what I have.
Caitlin DoughtyRead