Inquisition Quotes - Page 2

• We cannot permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Religious, Law, America

  Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1925

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• The very fears and guilts imposed by religious training are responsible for some of history's most brutal wars, crusades, pogroms, and persecutions, including five centuries of almost unimaginable terrorism under Europe's Inquisition and the unthinkably sadistic legal murder of nearly nine million women. History doesn't say much very good about God.

  Barbara G. Walker

  Religious, War, Europe

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• No other work has more often been blamed for more heinous crimes by the perpetrators of such crimes. The Bible has been named as the instigating or justifying factor for many individual and mass crimes, ranging from the religious wars, inquisitions, witch burnings, and pogroms of earlier eras to systematic child abuse and ritual murders today.

  Nadine Strossen

  Religious, Children, War

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• The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Religious, War, Native American

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “Religion”, p.55, Arthur Schopenhauer

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• The fact that we became a nation and immediately separated church and state - it has saved us from all the misery that has beset mankind with inquisitions, internecine and civil wars, and other assorted ills.

  Dumas Malone

  War, Government, Church

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• I wanted to know how much of conversion was forced - that is, forced in the sense that the Inquisition forced people to choose - forced Jews, let's say, and Muslims to choose conversion to Christianity or death. I wanted to see how much of conversion historically was forced in that way and how much of it was really a kind of persuasion.

  Susan Jacoby

  People, Way, Kind

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• The Scriptures have been misused to defend bloody crusades and inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to sanction the physical and emotional abuse of women and children; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith; to support the holocaust of Hitler's Third Reich; to oppose medical science; to condemn inter-racial marriage; to execute women as witches; to excuse the violent racism of the Ku Klux Klan; to mobilize militias, white supremacy and neo-nazi movements; and to condone intolerance and discrimination against sexual minorities.

  Mel White

  Christian, Children, Gay

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• When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register (NAR), which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury "the modern Domesday Book".

  James Buchan

  Book, London, Modern

  "Judgment Day... again" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. August 6, 2001.

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• I love life and want to hold onto it. But my passion for justice for my tormented people, for their dignity and freedom, must be greater still. For of what value is a life of slavery, of humiliation and contempt for that which you hold most dear: Your identity! I will therefore not give in to the Turkish Inquisition.

  Leyla Zana

  Passion, Love Life, People

  Leyla Zana (1999). “Writings from Prison”

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• The Philippines is a terrible name, coming from Spain. Phillip II was the father of the inquisition, who I believe died of syphilis. It is my great regret that we didn't change the name of our country.

  Imelda Marcos

  Country, Regret, Father

  "Queen of the islands". Interview with Jonathan Watts, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

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• Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.

  Wole Soyinka

  Monsters, Way, Crusades

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

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• Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheism, Heritage, Christianity

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• Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Reality, People, Mind

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.

  Voltaire

  Christian, Powerful, Hypocrite

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• Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. It's no coincidence that most of my abusive mail - sentencing me to exquisite Oriental tortures and relegating me to hell-fire and damnation -comes from self-admitted Catholics.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Fire, Self, Catholic

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• What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine.

  John Adams

  Christian, Book, Order

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.479

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• If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Hate, Believe, Men

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1909). “Interviews”

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• This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition.

  Camille Paglia

  Country, Example, Politics

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• It is subversive to set up inquisitions like this, state or national, into the thoughts and consciences of Americans. . . . It is subversive for commissions like this to spread hysteria and intimidation throughout the land that Americans are afraid to sign petitions, afraid to read progressive magazines, afraid to make out checks for liberal causes, afraid to join organizations, afraid to speak their mind on public issues. Americans dare not be free citizens! This is the destruction of democracy.

  Florence Luscomb

  Women, Hysteria, Issues

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• The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

  George Orwell

  Book, Facts, Praise

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.265, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.’ (1923)

  John Gresham Machen

  School, Mean, Free Education

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• 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.

  Steven Pinker

  War, Europe, Tolls

  "Is Human Violence On The Wane?". "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. October 7, 2011.

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• [There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens.

  Albert Einstein

  War, Rights, Political

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• No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope! Um, I'll come in again.

  Graham Chapman

  Two, Weapons, Surprise

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• There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.

  Mark Twain

  Party, Civilization, Differences

  Mark Twain (1869). “The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress”, p.275

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