Heretic Quotes

“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!”
― Edwin Markham

“I await your sentence with less fear than you pass it. The time will come when all will see what I see.”
― Giordano Bruno

“The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Why is it you trust my daughter so much when others almost universally revile her?"
"I consider their disdain for her to be a recommendation," he said.
"She is a heretic."
"She refused to join any of the devotaries because she did not believe in their teachings. Rather than compromise for the sake of appearances, she has been honest and has refused to make professions she does not believe. I find that a sign of honor.”
― brandon sanderson, The Way of Kings

“In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age.”
― Thomas Gold

“If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.

In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“Christ is not God, not the saviour of the world, but a mere man, a sinful man and an abominable idol. All who worship him are abominable idolaters and Christ did not rise again from death to life nor did he ascend into heaven.”
― Matthew Hammond

“A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.”
― Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

“Your mythology can and will change as you grow older and you learn more about life and the spiritual worlds. You are free to abrogate as many verses of your gospel as you wish, and even to be your own heretic.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“I refuse to share the thoughts of the ordinary. I am the outsider not because they expelled me but because I expelled them! I have rejected the world. I am contra mundum. I have climbed on top of the moon and deflected the earth from its path. I have put out the fires of the sun with just one of my tears.”
― Mark Romel, The Mistletoe Murders: A Nietzschean Murder Mystery

“-"I have kept the faith, Planchard."
-"Then you are the only man who has" Planchard said, "and it is an heretical faith."
-"They crucified Christ for heresy" Vexille said, "so to be named a heretic is to be one with Him.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Heretic

“Any scientist that wants to change the prevailing paradigm is automatically branded a heretic, apostate, infidel, blasphemer, maverick or lunatic, exactly as happens with religion. The scientist must break with his peers, and have his job, career and funding placed in extreme jeopardy. How many careerist scientists are up for that? The answer is zero. The result is that scientists go on thinking what the establishment and the funding bodies expect them to think, even though they themselves must, deep down, know they are supporting ludicrous claims that make no sense.”
― Thomas Stark, Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason

“Our God is a three-part being (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Mark T. Barclay-The Missing Red Letters”
― Mark T. Barclay, The Missing Red Letters

“To the mass of mankind, therefore, the philosopher may appear as a spiritual saboteur, a subverter of things lawfully established, and an apologist for the devil. So Spinoza appeared to his contemporaries, and for many years after his death he was regarded as the greatest heretic of the 17th century.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“We owe a wealth of gratitude to the many heretics that have gone before us, those that had thought independently, and courageously, and dared to step outside the boundaries of conventional thought.”
― Beth Sage Owens, A Heretic's Devotional

“It’s time to introduce a new fallacy that we have coined the Kool-Aid Fallacy. It goes like this: “You disagree with me and I’m in the majority while you’re in the minority. Therefore you’re a cult. Jim Jones led a cult and all of his followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid. Therefore, you’re a suicide cult and I am entitled to say, ‘Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.’” It’s unbelievable how many times this fallacy appears on social media. It is now so common that we can validly refer to a Kool-Aid version of Godwin’s Law. Any strong-minded minority with ideas that challenge the common herd will automatically be called a cult and then it is inevitable that Kool-Aid will be mentioned. Whenever any troll refers to “drinking the Kool-Aid”, they should immediately be labeled as having committed the Kool-Aid fallacy.”
― Thomas Stark, Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason

“It’s time to make your stand. It’s you against the world. It’s you contra mundum. This world is hell, but good, rational people of strong will can convert it into paradise.”
― Adam Weishaupt, Contra Mundum

“En Skoemager maa og tildeels være Theologus; saa at han veed at giøre Forskiel imellem Religions-Secter: Thi eet er at arbejde for en Orthodox, som vil have tynde og undertiden forkeerte Saaler [på forkerte eller vendte såler er syningerne indad], efterdi han bruger ofte sine Fødder til Dands; et andet er at giøre Skoe for en Kiætter, sær en Fanatico, som fordømmer Dands, og heller vil have stærke Saaler, for med des større Eftertryk at kunde træde paa Verdens Forfængelighed.”
― Ludvig Holberg, Epistler

“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it and die for it. The Church would make money from it. It would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror from men's hearts,”
― Bernard Cornwell, Heretic

“Every great philosopher, in their own way, questioned the fundamental assumptions that were present in the thinking of their time”
― Steven West

“The prophet—coming forth from time to time with the divine word hot as fire on his lips—speaks out the ancient truth and illuminates tradition. But they who cling to the words of tradition are apt to be blinded by the light of the fire and to call out “heretic” against the one who speaks the truth that they have lost.”
― Annie Besant, Avatâras Four lectures delivered at the twenty-fourth anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, December, 1899

“and it all comes down to this
a gospel written in the living
an incantation we pass hand to hand
soul to soul
it’s this
if you do nothing other than run
run in the direction of you”
― Stephanie Greene