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.
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
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
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take; _x000D_ For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
Meaning doesn't lie in things. Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that aren't love - the money, the car, the house, the prestige - we are loving things that can't love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless. Money, of itself, means nothing. Material things, of themselves, mean nothing. It's not that they're bad. It's that they're nothing. ("A Return to Love")
I've never really lived a conventional life, so I think it's quite foolish for me or anyone else to start thinking that I am going to start making conventional choices.
You still have only one self and one identity. However, self, identity and personality are not things, they are not objects, and they certainly are not rigid. Instead, they are biological processes built within the brain from numerous interactive components, step by step, over a period of time.
It takes solitude under the stars, for us to be reminded of our eternal origin and our far destiny.
In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.