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Heretic Quotes

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Heretic Quotes

“I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic.”

IfsBelieveMeanDoeSaidAtheistLabelsCall MeHumanistBelieve In GodSecularAgnosticSkepticFreethinkerHereticAdoptingDetest
Author:Michael Shermer
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“Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. There are no heretics in Nature's church; all are believers, all are communicants. The beauty of natural religion is that you have it all the time; you do not have to seek it afar off in myths and legends, in catacombs, in garbled texts, in miracles of dead saints or wine-bibbing friars. It is of today; it is now and here; it is everywhere.”

HeartTodayEarthMotherHoursNaturalChurchReligiousWalksMiracleWineSaintWoodsMythBelieverBreadSavingStreamsLegendsCommunionBathsMother EarthHereticRiteAfarOrdinancesMarrowFriarsBread And Wine
Book:Two modern essays on religion: A free man's worship
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“My aim is to lay bare and proclaim the crying and horrible guilt of the bloody doctrine of persecution as one of the most seditious, destructive, blasphemous, and bloodiest in any or all the nations of the world, notwithstanding the many fine veils, pretenses, and colors of not persecuting Christ Jesus, but heretics; not God's truth or servants, but blasphemers and seducers; not persecuting men for their conscience, but for sinning against their conscience; and like specious reasonings to justify the cruelty of intolerance.”

MenWorldJesusNationsChristCryColorFineConscienceAimLaysGuiltHorribleDoctrineCrueltyServantReasoningDestructiveJustifyIntoleranceBloodyPersecutionVeilsPretenseHereticSinning
Author:Roger Williams
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“The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.”

PeopleShouldHumansTodayNumbersOpinionProgressAtheismOughtTomorrowExtremesPositive AtheismMediumsDecentOriginalityModerationGood SenseUnreasonableHereticInquisitionSpanish Inquisition
Author:Maurice Maeterlinck
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“Prior to and during [John] Locke's time, it was difficult to determine where religion or church left off and government or state began. The powers of both were often combined. As a result, churches frequently used the force of the state to promote and enforce their interests and doctrines. This caused horrendous atrocities against Jews and heretics, as well as the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that resulted in the deaths of millions of people.”

PeopleWellsWarStatesGovernmentUsedLeftForceDifficultInterestChurchReligiousResultsMillionsCenturyCatholicDetermineJewDoctrineProtestantsAtrocitiesHereticReligious Wars
Author:Jayne Meadows
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“[Pope Francis] most recent trip was to Sweden, where he commemorated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. That had triggered one of the biggest splits in Christianity and decades of religious wars. He went so far as to praise Luther, who was once considered a heretic in the church, as a great reformer. So what he's been doing with other Christian churches is trying to heal past wounds and work together toward a shared view of their history.”

TryingWarChristianTogetherPastChurchReligiousViewsChristianityPraiseDecadesWoundsHealWorking TogetherSplitsPopeLutherReformationProtestantsHereticSwedenReformersChristian ChurchReligious WarsProtestant Reformation
Author:Sylvia Poggioli
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“I recall that I had a terrible struggle finding anything antireligious in the school libraries.But many years later my family moved into a house where a woman had left a box of books containing 20 volumes on the history of the Inquisition. I found out there was a word for people like me: "heretic." I was kind of delighted to find I had an identity.”

PeopleYearsKindBookSchoolFoundHouseLeftStruggleIdentityTerribleFindingsMy FamilyMovedLibraryBoxesLike MeRecallsVolumeDelightedHereticContainingInquisitionSchool Library
Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
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“The interesting thing about fake news and fake media is that it's a heresy against reality. Again, as a Catholic, I was taught that the greatest sin was heresy. Because not only are you a sinner, you are proselytizing and inviting other people into your sinful state through your heresy. You're a recruiter for your own fallen state. Donald Trump is a heretic against reality. Basically, he's lying for sport. He's inviting people into his heresy that there is no objective reality.”

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Author:Stephen Colbert
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“The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.”

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Book:George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit
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“Among the gods, there is a dispute as to which one of them originally thought of Christianity; or, as they call it, the Great Leg Pull. Apollo has the best claim, but a sizeable minority support Pluto, ex-God of the Dead, on the grounds that he has a really sick sense of humour. How would it be, suggested the unidentified god, if first we tell them all to love their neighbour, pack in the killing and thieving, and be nice to each other. Then we let them start burning heretics.”

IfsFirstsChristianitySupportNiceHumourSickClaimsKillingLegsBurningMinoritiesPacksBeing NiceExesDisputesNeighbourApolloHereticPluto
Author:Tom Holt
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“We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present-your future-a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty-the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simpl...truth that earth's resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalistic illusion fell to pieces. Those of us who spoke this truth were denounced as heretics, as enemies of the prevailing economic faith. Like religious Dissenters of an earlier day.”

EndsWholeFactsRunningEarthReligiousEnemyPovertyPiecesEconomicIllusionResourcesExperimentsFuelSpokesRefugeExhaustedYour FutureSeekersFamineSuppliesPrevailingHereticTerminal
Author:Thomas Pynchon
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“Heretics are wicked, but they're mighty int'resting. It's jest that they've got sorter lost looking for God, being under the impression that He's hard to find - which He ain't never.”

HardLostImpressionWickedHereticJest
Book:L. M. MONTGOMERY – Premium Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry & Autobiography (Including Anne Shirley Novels, Chronicles of Avonlea & The Story Girl Series): Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne's House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley, The Golden Road, Kilmeny of the Orchard, The Watchman, Songs of the Sea & many more
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“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.”

KnowsMenKindHas BeensSometimesFeelingsLightAgeChurchReligiousCasesTeachingGeniusHighestFilledAtheistSaintDogmaDistinguishedHereticSpinoza
Book:Ideas and Opinions
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“But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”

IfsWayFirstsPastLyingWaitingEnemyWorstReadyFoolDevilLonelySevenForestsFlamesBeing YourselfWitchVillainAshesWorst EnemyHereticDoubtersCavernsAlways Be Yourself
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic.”

IfsMenWorldNeedsOpinionSawsIdentityTruth IsEvery ManWitnessPriestsHeretic
Book:The Crossing: Book 2 of The Border Trilogy
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“Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader's armor, a cardinal's vestments. Let me feel the pygmy's heartbeat, the queen's breast, the torturer's pleasure, the Nile's taste, or the nomad's thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.”

KnowsWorldFeelsMovingTurnsBlackPleasureTasteLet MeSouthJewQueensBreastsChicagoThirstBlack WomenHeartbeatArmorSubwayEntrancesCarolinaGreat WritersCardinalsHereticHarlemNomadSouth CarolinaTurn MeNileHermaphrodites
Author:Pat Conroy
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“But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.”

PeoplePurposeStrongChurchAcceptingSupportConcernRomeConquestAdversariesHeresyOrthodoxyHeretic
Book:The Name of the Rose
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“The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation, but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus miracles attested to, and scapegoats - such as Jews or heretics or witches - hunted down and burned.”

HumansMadeUsedReligionPrayerSacrificeIgnoranceMiracleDown AndSpeciesJewUselessExplanationWitchEpisodesBurnedCalamityEpidemicsHereticHuntedScapegoatCulprit
Book:The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
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“I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.”

WorldProgressAtheismHumilityIgnoranceAtheistPositive AtheismInsightfulStakesBurnedAgnosticDecencyFanaticsPaganSkepticThere Is No GodAgnosticismMenaceExplorersPretensionHereticUnbelieversIf There Is A GodThere Being No GodIdeologues
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“If we move in the direction of biblial absolutism how can we escape turning the New Testament into a Christian Torah and the gospel into a new law? Once we do that, religious fascism with all its sectarian ugliness cannot be far away. Far better a mistaken Christian (a heretic) who has somehow caught the Spirit of Christ, than an orthodox Protestant who thinks that the Spirit is mediated to him through the letter of correct theology.”

IfsThinkingChristianMovingLawSpiritChristReligiousBibleLettersCaughtTheologyOrthodoxFascismFar AwayBiblicalMistakenTestamentUglinessNew TestamentProtestantsHereticTorahAbsolutism
Author:Robert D. Brinsmead
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“The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges-slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare-killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons.”

WorldBelieveWarEnoughLastsNextExistenceCenturyExampleWeaponsSlaveryDisappearNuclearScalesOptimisticTortureNuclear WeaponsWarfareHereticLarge ScaleScourgeSmallpox
Author:Luis Walter Alvarez
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“He has inhibited discussion by designating admonition as the method of dealing with a heretic- and the first method, too, because he is not a Christian. This is so that he would not seem to require correction again and again and before two or three witnesses as though he were a Christian. He ought to be corrected for the very reason that he is not to be disputed with. In addition, this is said because a controversy over the Scriptures can, clearly, produce no other effect than help to upset either the stomach or the brain.”

FirstsSaidTwoReasonHelpingSeemsChristianThreeBrainEffectsProduceOughtMethodScriptureWitnessDiscussionUpsetSarcasticStomachAgain And AgainControversyCorrectionsHereticAdmonition
Author:Tertullian
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“Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.”

CharacterReligionMistakeAtheismHonestyContraryGood FriendHeresyHeretic
Book:The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin .. Comprising a Series of Letters on Miscellaneous, Litarary, and Political Subjects: Written Between the Years 1753 and 1790; Illustrating the Memoirs of His Public and Private Life, and Developing the Secret History of His Political Transactions and Negociations. Now First Published from the Originals
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