Inquisition Quotes - Page 4

• I would love to make some kind of film about the witches and the Inquisitions. That would be really fun because I don't think their stories have been told enough.

  Amy Smart

  Fun, Thinking, Would Be

  "Interview: Amy Smart" by Vicki Hogarth, www.askmen.com.

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• If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth]prevail over fanaticism.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Law, Practice, Public Opinion

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• If this is how science operates, by silencing those who express opposing views rather than by debating with them, then science is dead and we are in a new era of the Inquisition.

  Graham Hancock

  Views, Eras, New Era

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• Where there is no danger of overt action there is rarely any interference with freedom. That is why there has so often been amazing freedom of opinion within an aristocratic class which at the same time sanctioned the ruthless suppression of heterodox opinion among the common people. When the Inquisition was operating most effectively against the bourgeois who had lapsed into heresy, the princes of the Church and the nobles enjoyed the freedom of the Renaissance.

  Walter Lippmann

  Class, People, Church

  Walter Lippmann (2003). “Men of Destiny (Ppr)”, p.99, Transaction Publishers

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• There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.

  Walter Lippmann

  Thinking, Self, Ideas

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

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• Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.

  Frank Zappa

  Two, Abnormal, Steps

  Interview on Channel 4, June 1, 1983.

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• As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican-we have only to recall the Inquisition-the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!

  John William Draper

  Science, Blood, Hands

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.11, New York, D. Appleton

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• It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree.

  James Madison

  Religion, Atheism, May

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• I appeal to the contemptible speech made lately by Sir Robert Peel to an applauding House of Commons. 'Orders of merit,' said he, 'were the proper rewards of the military' (the desolators of the world in all ages). 'Men of science are better left to the applause of their own hearts.' Most learned Legislator! Most liberal cotton-spinner! Was your title the proper reward of military prowess? Pity you hold not the dungeon-keys of an English Inquisition! Perhaps Science, like creeds, would flourish best under a little persecution.

  John Joseph Griffin

  Military, Heart, Science

  John Joseph Griffin (1834). “Chemical Recreations: A Series of Amusing and Instructive Experiments, which May be Performed with Ease, Safety, Success, and Economy ; to which is Added, The Romance of Chemistry : an Inquiry Into the Fallacies of the Prevailing Theory of Chemistry : with a New Theory and a New Nomenclature”, p.232

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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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• It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans.

  Laurence Sterne

  Religious, Differences, Spirit

  Laurence Sterne (1803). “The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author, Written by Himself ...”, p.43

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• This was how you wound up in the Inquisition. When you stopped being able to see any difference between Light Ones and Dark Ones. When for you, people weren't even a flock of sheep, but just a handful of spiders in a glass jar. When you stopped believing in the future, and all you wanted to do was preserve the status quo. For yourself. For those few individuals who were still dear to you.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Believe, Dark, Differences

  Sergei Lukyanenko (2009). “The Twilight Watch: (Night Watch 3)”, p.344, Random House

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• Whoever attempts to suppress liberty of conscience finishes some day by wishing for the Inquisition.

  Jules Simon

  Wish, Liberty, Conscience

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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 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!

  Galileo Galilei

  Men, Littles, Philosopher

  Letter to Fr. Vincenzo Renieri, 1633.

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• I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division.

  Edward Kennedy

  Fire, Light, America

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• After the survivor of the Spanish conquest has told his life's story he is convicted by the Inquisition: He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire consequences he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered only one comment: "It will mean I do not go to the Christian heaven?" He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments: that he would most assuredly not go to Heaven. At which, his smile sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court.

  Gary Jennings

  Christian, Mean, Punishment

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• All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy - making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Ignorance, Men, Law

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.312, Library of Alexandria

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