Heretic Quotes

She laughed at herself when she saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much as ever. ~ Sinclair Lewis

-"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

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic. ~ Albert Camus

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined. ~ Learned Hand

Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. ~ John Calvin

In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist. ~ Richard B. Garnett

Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly. To his contemporaries it appeared frivolous and contradictory to perform as both superman and socialist, sceptic and believer, legalist and heretic, high-brow and mob-orator. But feeling the duty to teach as well as to mirror mankind, Shaw did not accept himself as a contradictory being. ~ Jacques Barzun

When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic? ~ Marie Corelli

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I once saw the world's ugliest baby drown. But then I realized, "That's not a baby, that's a log. And it's not drowning, it's burning." I wonder what it did to deserve that? It was probably a heretic. ~ Jarod Kintz

Hen Maistre adopts Bossuet's bold idea that "the heretic is he who has personal
ideas" - in other words, ideas that have no reference to either a social or a religious tradition - he provides
the formula for the most ancient and the most modern of conformities. ~ Albert Camus

He has inhibited discussion by designating admonition as the method of dealing with a heretic- and the first method, too, because he is not a Christian. This is so that he would not seem to require correction again and again and before two or three witnesses as though he were a Christian. He ought to be corrected for the very reason that he is not to be disputed with. In addition, this is said because a controversy over the Scriptures can, clearly, produce no other effect than help to upset either the stomach or the brain. ~ Tertullian

Throughout history, Christians have faced the persistent temptation of confusing the language we use to talk about God with the essence of Christian faith. This stubborn human tendency to turn doctrine into an idol - to confuse a human creation with the truth itself - can easily lead people to wield doctrinal claims as a weapon against minority or dissenting perspectives. Thus, anyone who does not line up with a certain formulation of Christian faith is not only wrong, but also a heretic and therefore worthy of punishment or death. ~ John D. Roth

Wicked sons do not have the Holy Ghost in the same way as do beloved sons, and yet they do have Baptism. So, too, heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have, even though they have Baptism. ~ Saint Augustine

Inconsistent professing Christians injure the Gospel more than the sneering critic or the heretic. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Conformists die, but heretics live forever. ~ Elbert Hubbard

The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to years, ages). But someone must see this already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of human thought. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Christianity is a creed embraced by billions, but rarely chosen by anyone. The same is true of Islam, whose followers now make up about one-fifth of the world's population of sex billion people. Jews are racially born into their religion. Today we have utterly forgotten that heresy derives from the Greek heraisthai, "to choose." To be heretical means to have choices and not be forced or obligated to believe what one is told to believe. A heretic is free to choose what to believe, or not to believe. ~ John Lamb Lash

The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. ("Tomorrow") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

They drew a line that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout!
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle and brought them in. ~ Edwin Markham

A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Those who loved with all their heart and mind and might have always thought of death, and those who knew the endless nights of harrowing concern for others have longed for it. The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worthwhile and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die. (The Faith of a Heretic) ~ Walter Kaufmann

The bishop was aghast. "You would threaten me?"
Christian didn't hesitate with his answer."For her life, aye."
"You would jeopardize your soul for her? She is a heretic and a witch."
"She is a woman. My woman."
His words only succeeded in angering the bishop more. "I will have you excommunicated for this."
Christian pulled the black monk's robe from over his head and balled it up. "Then excommunicate me. If I am in the wrong for protecting an innocent woman, then God can judge me as He will. ~ Kinley MacGregor

For a brazen Libertine, an adulterer, a sodomite, an atheist, a fornicator, rakehell, heretic, godless playmaker and debaucher of innocents, you're a sorry state of affairs. ~ Elizabeth Bear

I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will! ~ Meister Eckhart

Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. In the purely historical universe that they
have chosen, rebellion and revolution end in the same dilemma: either police rule or insanity. ~ Albert Camus

You don't have a god in you, you are one. ~ Kenneth Copeland

He is a good man, and I don't like Thomas More and his band of heretic hunters. A man should have a right to believe what a man wants to believe. (p. 337) ~ Brenda Rickman Vantrease

Everything is darkest," Xaphen mused, "before the dawn."

"That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realize it's a lie. ~ Aaron Dembski-Bowden

The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth. ~ Sydney J. Harris

A heretic is someone who has belief, but not the right kind. At least according to the Catholic Church. A heretic might believe in God, but some of the other things she believes don't match up with the party line. ~ Katie Henry

To try to fashion something from suffering, to relish our triumphs, and to endure defeats without resentment: all that is compatible with the faith of a heretic. ~ Walter Kaufmann

Toasted Heretic should have been cherished and helped, rather than ignored or sneered at, or put down as "quirky band with an arrogant singer". So I certainly didn't help the band, but the virtues I had meant that we recorded albums when everyone else just listened to them. But, yes, if you could suffer from high self-esteem, then I certainly suffered. ~ Julian Gough

If liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation, and free speech over offense. ~ Maajid Nawaz

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.
("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

The heretic was brought before the Supreme Judge unrestrained, there was no fear that he would flee. The room in which the heretic now stood was thoroughly secured, although the man had no intention of trying to escape anyhow. ~ Dennis B. Boyer

Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day become a formal heretic or be led astray by the devil. ~ Louis De Montfort

If we move in the direction of biblial absolutism how can we escape turning the New Testament into a Christian Torah and the gospel into a new law? Once we do that, religious fascism with all its sectarian ugliness cannot be far away. Far better a mistaken Christian (a heretic) who has somehow caught the Spirit of Christ, than an orthodox Protestant who thinks that the Spirit is mediated to him through the letter of correct theology. ~ Robert D. Brinsmead

In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from a far country. The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood. ~ Umberto Eco

The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals. ~ Jacques Barzun

Satan conquered Jesus on the Cross and took His spirit to the dark regions of hell ~ Kenneth Copeland

...One thing I have noticed, child, is that tyrants are the grandest romantics. They can burn a heretic alive once day, and compose a love sonnet the next. ~ Candace Fleming

She [88yo Mrs Fitzgerald] crossed herself and patted my arm. "And you're after coming all the way from England to find out who done it? Aren't you great? God bless you, young fella."
"The old heretic," I said, when we got outside. Mrs. Fitzgerald had cheered up my day immensely. "I hope I have that much zip when I'm eighty-eight ~ Tana French

Actuated by these motives, and apprehensive of disturbing the repose of an unsettled reign, Julian surprised the world by an edict which was not unworthy of a statesman or a philosopher. He extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects, whom they stigmatised with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics. ~ Edward Gibbon

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

I have an opinion about holy war, which in general I must keep to myself. I have no wish to be known as a heretic. It is ... that if a war can be holy, then God cannot. At best a war can only be necessary. ~ Louis De Bernieres

I am always nighttime on the inside
barefoot and heretic ~ Deborah Landau

Every artist of importance creates his own world, with its own laws - creates and shapes it in his own shape and image, and no one else's. This is why it is difficult to fit the artist into a world that has already been created, a seven-day, fixed and solidified world: he will inevitably slip out of the set of laws and paragraphs, he will be a heretic. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

I bless the Lord that my heart is at that point, that if any man can lay any thing to my charge, either in doctrine or in practice, in this particular, that can be proved error or heresy, I am willing to disown it, even in the very market-place; but if it be truth, then to stand to it to the last drop of my blood. And, Sir, said I, you ought to commend me for so doing. To err and to be a heretic are two things; I am no heretic, because I will not stand refractorily to defend any one thing that is contrary to the Word. Prove any thing which I hold to be an error, and I will recant it. ~ John Bunyan

In corporation [corporate] religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right. ~ Antony Jay

The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration. ~ John Locke

Well, another female child is born into the world! Last Sunday afternoon, Harriot Eaton Stanton - oh! the little heretic thus to desecrate that holy holiday - opened her soft blue eyes on this mundane sphere. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic. ~ Sheri S. Tepper

The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge ~ Umberto Eco

Of course, I am a heretic. The word hairesis in Greek means choice; a heretic is one who is able to choose. Its root stems from the Greek word hairein, to take. Faced with the mystery of life and death, each act of faith is a gamble. We all risk choices before the unknown. -Forrest Church ~ John A. Buehrens

And so, lastly, does the very name of "Catholic", which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house. ~ Saint Augustine

It is unholy because it is heretic. It is foul. It is abominable to need something so badly that you cannot picture living without it. It is a contradiction to the condition of mankind. ~ Shirley Jackson

It would certainly not be correct to speak of a tradition of pacifism in the Church. Our survey shows only four early writers - not all should be called Fathers - who are absolute pacifists. They are: Marcion, who is a formal heretic; Tatian, also a formal heretic, Tertullian, who expressed pacifism only after becoming a heretical Montanist; before that he was not pacifistic; and Lactantius who in the passage in which he expressed pacifism also contradicted St. Paul, which is substantially the same as heresy. So there is not even one respectable example of pacifism in the Fathers. ~ William Most

In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity. ~ Margaret Atwood

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Better to be always in a minority of one with God - branded as madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel - frowned upon by "the powers that be," and mobbed by the populace - or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose "soul is marching on," though his "body lies mouldering in the grave," or burnt to ashes at the stake like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross like him who "gave himself for the world," - in defence of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of a multitude crying, "It is the voice of a god, and not of a man! ~ William Lloyd Garrison

If anyone dared to assert that the Pontiff had erred in this or that canonisation, we shall say that he is, if not a heretic, at least temerarious, a giver of scandal to the whole Church, an insulter of the saints, a favourer of those heretics who deny the Church's authority in canonizing saints, savouring of heresy by giving unbelievers an occasion to mock the faithful, the assertor of an erroneous opinion and liable to very grave penalties. ~ Pope Benedict XIV

I don't believe that God is a fussy faultfinder in dealing with theological ideas. He who provides forgiveness for a sinful life will also surely be a generous judge of theological reflection. Even an orthodox theologian can be spiritually dead, while perhaps a heretic crawls on forbidden bypaths to the sources of life. ~ Helmut Thielicke

The ideal which I strive to realize in my life is the serene
sensuousness of the Greeks
pleasure without pain. I do not believe
in the kind of love which is preached by Christianity, by the
moderns, by the knights of the spirit. Yes, look at me, I am worse
than a heretic, I am a pagan. ~ Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Three hundred and fifty years ago, Shulgin notes, the Church proclaimed, "The earth is the center of the universe, and anyone who says otherwise is a heretic." Today, the government proclaims, "All drugs that can expand consciousness are without medical or social justification, and anyone who uses them is a criminal." In Galileo's time, the authorities said, "We do not need to actually look through that mysterious contraption." Now the government says, "There is no need to actually taste those mysterious compounds." In the past, the Church said, "How dare you claim that the earth is not the center of the universe?" Today the government says, "How dare you claim that an understanding of God is to be found in a white powder? ~ Daniel Pinchbeck

Disobedience is as much a proof of authority as obedience. You cannot rebel without acknowledging a government. You cannot be a heretic until you are first a believer. And I could leave the priesthood, but I would still be a priest. The church would endure with or without me. Some vows are merely promises. But some are sacraments. Like marriage. Yes, she did leave me, and I let her go. But she will return. ~ Tiffany Reisz

O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy. ~ Mansur Al-Hallaj

Far from being an aberration that is not representative of Christianity, the persecution of heretics follows logically from the connection of faith and salvation as presented by Jesus in the Gospels. ~ Shadia Drury

It is a heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in it. ~ William Shakespeare

Hence from all we have hitherto said, it is clear beloved Catholics that we cannot approve the opinions which some [Protestants, Jews, and other heretics] comprise under the head of Americanism [freedom]. ~ Pope Leo XIII

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor. ~ Eric Hoffer

Religious men are and must be heretics now- for we must not pray, except in a "form" of words, made beforehand- or think of God but with a prearranged idea. ~ Florence Nightingale

The heretic is the one who speaks against the community from a place within its territory. He is the enemy within. The heathen, by contrast, is safely behind the walls, excluded by his own invincible arrogance. ~ Roger Scruton

But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests. Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way! A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain. Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes! Thou ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The first step in identifying "heresy" is to refuse all identifications with the subjective intuitions and experience of the "heretic," and to see his words only in an impersonal realm in which there is no dialogue - in which dialogue is denied a priori. ~ Thomas Merton

Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way. ~ Yip Harburg

Faith is a free work to which no one can be forced. Heresy is a spiritual matter and cannot be prevented by constraint. Force may avail either to strengthen alike faith and heresy, or to break down integrity and turn a heretic into a hypocrite who confesses with his lips what he does not believe in his heart. Better to let men err than to drive them to lie. ~ Martin Luther

When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not
destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture
his inner mind, we reshape him. ~ George Orwell

Christianity ... made, for nearly 1,500 years, persecution, religious wars, massacres, theological feuds and bloodshed, heresy huntings and heretic burnings, prisons, dungeons, anathemas, curses, opposition to science, hatred of liberty, spiritual bondage, the life without love or laughter ... ~ M. M. Mangasarian

Heretic ... is a person who seizes upon a truth and pushes it to the point at which it becomes a falsehood. ~ T. S. Eliot

Thieves, Heretics, and Whores ~ Patrick Rothfuss

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

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

It's only a short step from a burning bush to a burning heretic, after all. I try not to bother God, and hope He'll do me the same courtesy. ~ Simon R. Green

If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic. ~ Joseph Addison

A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself. ~ Irenaeus Of Lyons

Heretics think false things about God and call it their faith. ~ Saint Augustine

The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Oh, he can bend even the theologians to his will," Michael said sadly. "Not necessarily," William replied. "We live in times when those learned in divine things have no fear of proclaiming the Pope a heretic. Those learned in divine things are in their way the voice of the Christian people. Not even the Pope can set himself against them now. ~ Umberto Eco

Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo. ~ Jay Griffiths

There have been summits of civilization at which heretics like Socrates , who was killed because he was wiser than his neighbors, have not been tortured, but ordered to kill themselves in the most painless manner known to their judges. But from that summit there was a speedy relapse into our present savagery. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I have become an obstinate heretic in the eyes of my colleagues. Momentary success carries more power of conviction than reflections upon principles. ~ Albert Einstein

A heretic, my dear sir, is a fellow who disagrees with you regarding something neither of you knows anything about. ~ William Cowper

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes. ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it. The heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. It is doing what they reproach us with. ~ Blaise Pascal

In Europe I have been accused of taking my scientific ideas from the Church. In America I have been called a heretic, because I will not let my church-going friends pat me on the head. ~ Louis Agassiz

Ockham snorted. I am no nominalist. The problem with teaching the Modern Way is that lesser scholars, excited by the novelty, seldom bother to master my insights. There are lips on which I heartily wish my name had never rested. I tell you, Dietl, a man becomes a heretic less for what he writes than for what others believe he has written. ~ Michael Flynn

Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Through all the ages the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiter - every form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation - every form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing squad - have been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection. Yet only to the extent to which - in chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders - some men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive. ~ Ayn Rand

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy. ~ Denis Diderot