Heretic Quotes

• 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.

  Sun Myung Moon

  Christian, Views, Important

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• 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.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Heaven, Catholic, Desperation

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1873). “The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons Preached and Revised”, p.57

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• 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.

  Aleister Crowley

  Doctors, People, World

  "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 17, 1969.

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

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Army, May, Six

  Desiderius Erasmus (1959). “The Praise of Folly”

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• 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

  Edwin Markham

  Love, Life, Peace

  Edwin Markham, “Epigrams”

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• Tout re  volutionnaire finit en oppresseur ou en he  re  tique. Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

  Albert Camus

  Revolutionary, Ends, Oppressors

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• Conformists die, but heretics live forever.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Forever, Dies, Conformist

  Elbert Hubbard (1928). “Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great ...”

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

  Marie Corelli

  Church, God Love, One Love

  Marie Corelli (2015). “The Master Christian”, p.187, The Floating Press

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• You know, I found out recently that the word "heretic" comes from the Greek word "airetikós", meaning "able to choose" - which pretty much says it all, don't you think?

  Pat Condell

  Thinking, Greek, Able

  YouTube Channel "Pat Condell"/"The Arrogance Of Clergy", www.youtube.com. October 02, 2009.

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• A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Wisdom, Eye, Men

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• A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Christian, Wicked, Virtuous

  Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson (2003). “A Benjamin Franklin Reader”, p.106, Simon and Schuster

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

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Alive, World, Copernicus

  "Tomorrow" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, translated by Mirra Ginsburg in "A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin" (1970), 1919.

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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?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Being Yourself, Lonely, Lying

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• 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.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Anger, Sides, Burned

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• The declared enemies of God and His Church, heretics and schismatics, must be criticized as much as possible, as long as truth is not denied. It is a work of charity to shout: 'Here is the wolf!' when it enters the flock or anywhere else.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Powerful, Long, Catholic

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• ... faithfully and strenuously you should resist the heretics in defense of the only true and life-giving faith, which the Church has received - the apostles and imparted to her sons. For the Lord of all gave to His apostles the power of the Gospel, through whom also we have known the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of God: to whom also did the Lord declare: 'He who hears you, hears Me; and he who despises you, despises Me, and Him who sent Me' (Lk. 10:16).

  Pope Clement I

  Christian, Son, Giving

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• Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.

  John Henry Newman

  Love, Self, Roots

  John Henry Newman (1997). “Parochial and Plain Sermons”, p.39, Ignatius Press

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• 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.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Eye, Soul, Skins

  interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. November 18, 2006.

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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.

  Tom Holt

  Nice, Sick, Support

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• It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Race, Years

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.57, See Sharp Press

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• 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.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  War, World, Saving

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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.

  Stephen Colbert

  Sports, Lying, Reality

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• 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.

  A. H. Almaas

  Believe, Mind, Realization

  A. H. Almaas (2011). “Diamond Heart: Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery”, p.63, Shambhala Publications

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• All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

  John Shelby Spong

  Religious, War, Religion

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• 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.

  Thabo Mbeki

  Views, Worry, World

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