Heretic Quotes

In corporation [corporate] religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right.

A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian.

Whenever the true message of the cross is abolished, the anger of hypocrites and heretics eases and all things seem to be at peace.

All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.

False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

And so, lastly, does the very name of “Catholic”, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.

The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur “it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good.” This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.

Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic.

Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Gotcha!

The word heretic ought to be a term of honour.

The system of Christian celebrity was not a good space for me, and it was brutal on my kids – my son in college was frequently confronted by people railing against me as a heretic.

Heretics think false things about God and call it their faith.

No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

Well, another female child is born into the world! Last Sunday afternoon, Harriot Eaton Stanton – oh! the little heretic thus to desecrate that holy holiday – opened her soft blue eyes on this mundane sphere.

Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

Liberalism is the right to question without being called a heretic. That’s what America did for the world.

’tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.

Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.

What I am is a heretic who’s recanted, and thereby in everyone’s eyes saved his soul. Everyone’s eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.

Books of apostates, heretics, schismatics, and all other writers defending heresy or schism or in any attacking the foundations of religion, are altogether prohibited.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks and heretics the world would not progress.

The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.

Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it. The heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. It is doing what they reproach us with.

Religious men are and must be heretics now- for we must not pray, except in a “form” of words, made beforehand- or think of God but with a prearranged idea.

Some people think I’m a mycological heretic, some people think I’m a mycological revolutionary, and some just think I’m crazy.

If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.

Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.

When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?

Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day become a formal heretic or be led astray by the devil.

If one takes full account of the persecution of heretics, the frequency and savagery of the religious wars which Christianity had endangered, the harm caused, especially to children, by the pernicious doctrine of original sin, a case could be made for saying that the world would have been better off without Christianity.

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

By heart we believe and by mouth confess the one Church, not of heretics but the Holy Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church outside which we believe that no one is saved.

There have been summits of civilization at which heretics like Socrates , who was killed because he was wiser than his neighbors, have not been tortured, but ordered to kill themselves in the most painless manner known to their judges. But from that summit there was a speedy relapse into our present savagery.

O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy.

To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up – [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.

A heretic can be tolerated. But a heresy cannot.

Conformists die, but heretics live forever.

It is a heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in it.

I can understand why Christians call us heretics. But most important, who will God call a heretic? From God’s point of view, my revelation is deeply orthodox.

It’s very worrying at this time in the world that any point of view should be prohibited, that’s banned, there are heretics that should be burned at the stake.

The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that?

They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic.

At the time of Caliph Omar’s invasion of Egypt, the Arab officer on duty in the destruction of the library of Alexandria used two stamps with which he marked the books. One said: ‘Does not agree with the Koran – heretic, must be burned’. The other said: ‘Agrees with the Koran – superfluous, must be burned’.

As a movement Cubism had consistently stopped short of complete abstraction. Heretics such as Delaunay had painted pure abstractions but in so doing had deserted Cubism.

I have always been on the side of the heretics, against those who burned them, because the heretics so often turned out to be right….Dead, but right.

I have become an obstinate heretic in the eyes of my colleagues. Momentary success carries more power of conviction than reflections upon principles.

For many people, I’ve ceased to be a human being. I’ve become an issue, a bother, an “affair”…. And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can’t recognize religious persecution when you see it?

It used to be, it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.

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.

Christianity…made, for nearly 1,500 years, persecution, religious wars, massacres, theological feuds and bloodshed, heresy huntings and heretic burnings, prisons, dungeons, anathemas, curses, opposition to science, hatred of liberty, spiritual bondage, the life without love or laughter.

The Heretic Queen is historical fiction at its best. Michelle Moran seamlessly incorporates accurate details into a story full of suspense, intrigue, and tenderness that’s impossible to put down until you’ve reached the last page. An absolute triumph!

Hence from all we have hitherto said, it is clear beloved Catholics that we cannot approve the opinions which some [Protestants, Jews, and other heretics] comprise under the head of Americanism [freedom].

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.

What I am is a heretic who’s recanted and, thereby, in everyone’s eyes, saved his soul. Everyone’s eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.

I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition!

Inconsistent professing Christians injure the Gospel more than the sneering critic or the heretic.

To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic.

I’ve seen my name on marquees and bowed to standing ovations. I’ve also been called a fraud, a mental case, a heretic. People all over the country wait in line to hug me or curse me.

I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!

A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs.

I don’t think of ‘heretic’ as a pejorative term – necessarily.

In a battle between В two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.

In the beginning was the word, and it was spoken.

Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes

In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist.

You know, I found out recently that the word “heretic” comes from the Greek word “airetikГіs”, meaning “able to choose” – which pretty much says it all, don’t you think?

That is the whole trouble with being a heretic. One usually must think out everything for oneself.

If liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation, and free speech over offense.

The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell.

I find that the whole weight of relieving human misery and distress falls on the shoulders of those Heretics and Infidels; and though great part of this distress has been occasioned by those ravening wolves’ hopeful converts.

It was a very stupid mistake to think you could deal with heresy by burning heretics. It’s the very same mistake that modernist Catholics are making today in reverse. They think you can love heretics by loving heresies.

A heretic, my dear sir, is a fellow who disagrees with you regarding something neither of you knows anything about.

You don’t have a god in you, you are one.

The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals.

I shall never be a heretic; I may err in dispute, but I do not wish to decide anything finally; on the other hand, I am not bound by the opinions of men.

Tout reВ  volutionnaire finit en oppresseur ou en heВ  reВ  tique. Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic

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.

THE HERETIC’S DAUGHTER is raw, honest and completely captivating. Kathleen Kent takes what would seem to be a familiar subject and gives it a fresh, new perspective-moving us through a wrenching gamut of emotions as she does so. A searing look at one of the worst periods in our history.

The world is kept alive only by heretics.

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.

To be a heretic to-day is almost a human obligation.

Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt.

We wanted to raise a generation of heretics, but instead we raised a generation of ignoramuses

To Arab Sunni Islamists, Iranians are gabrs (Zoroastrians) while Shi’ites, including Arab ones, are rafidis (heretics) who must be “re-converted” or put to death.

Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless they depict the Church as evil, false, and mendacious. They alone wish to be esteemed as the good, but the Church must be made to appear evil in every respect.

But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.

The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy…

Today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. It used to be [that] it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.

Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people.

When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated; and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics.

If we are to reach certainty and true autonomy of realization, we need to be willing to be heretics. What’s more, we need to become universal heretics, not believing anything that we do not know from direct experience, beyond stories, beyond hearsay, and even beyond the mind.

The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.

Satan conquered Jesus on the Cross and took His spirit to the dark regions of hell

Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.

A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha , Jesus , Mohammed were branded as rebels and heretics by their contemporaries. Said the Master, Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy .

He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In ! From the poem ” Outwitted

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history, Europe has experience [with] heretics who turned out to have a point.

The ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later generation.

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.

Wicked sons do not have the Holy Ghost in the same way as do beloved sons, and yet they do have Baptism. So, too, heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have, even though they have Baptism.

Lives of great men all remind us, Greatness takes no easy way, All the heroes of tomorrow, Are the heretics of today. Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs, Heard the night cry “Down with traitors!” And the dawn shout “Up the rebs!”

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis; al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his Sunni population.