Inquisition Quotes - Page 5

• Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical.

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Men, Law, Atheism

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• Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.

  Werner Herzog

  Grandchildren, Punishment, Achievement

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• Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man's enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Time, Retirement, Envy

  Jeremy Taylor (1847). “The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living”, p.127

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• The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

  Sam Harris

  Men, Religion, Bishops

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.84, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.

  Hans Urs von Balthasar

  Age, Splits, Spirituality

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• The Inquisition confused sin with sinners and judged both. Modern Americans make the same mistake but judge neither.

  Peter Kreeft

  Confused, Mistake, Judging

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• Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Years, Enemy, Lasts

  "Anthony Hopkins Interview 'The Rite'; Plus Updates on 'Thor', 360, Composing Music, Painting, and a lot More". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. January 26, 2011.

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• If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Christian, Art, Taken

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• The dogmatism of science has become a new orthodoxy, disseminated by the Media and a State educational system with a thoroughness and subtlety far exceeding anything of the kind achieved by the Inquisition; to the point that to believe today in a miraculous happening like the Virgin Birth is to appear a kind of imbecile.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Educational, Believe, Media

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1985). “Vintage Muggeridge: religion and society”, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

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• Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Enemy, Nazi, Certain

  "Actor Sir Anthony Hopkins". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. January 27, 2011.

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• I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition. I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence. Not beautiful in the sense of "oh it's flowy" but in the sense that it really does what it's supposed to do, it what I want it to say.

  Lynne Tillman

  Beautiful, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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