Masonic Quotes

There are no strangers in Freemasonry, only friends you've yet to meet. ~ Dave Thomas

The true Mason always carries his working tools everywhere. ~ William Howard Taft

I would say aside from Moxie soda bottles and Masonic artifacts, there's nothing I really collect. ~ John Hodgman

To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General (33rd Degree Masons), we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees: 'The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine.' ~ Albert Pike

First Conjuration Addressed to Emperor Lucifer. Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee to leave thine abode, in what-ever quarter of the world it may be situated and come hither to communicate with me. ~ A. E. Waite

In 1850 Allan Pinkerton founded the first American private detective agency; in advertisements, the company motto, "We Never Sleep" was inscribed under a large, unblinking Masonic-like eye, which gave rise to the term "private eye".... William J. Burns was an avid user of a Dictograph- a primitive listening device that could be concealed in anything from a clock to a chandelier.... Just as Allan Pinkerton, in the nineteenth century was known as the eye, Burns, In the twentieth century had become "the ear". ~ David Grann

The precepts of the Gospel were universally the obligations of Masonry. ~ William Howard Taft

The magic in these Masonic rituals is very, very old. And way back in those days, it worked. As time went on, and it started being used for spectacle, to consolidate what were only secular appearances of power, it began to lose its zip. But the words, moves, and machinery have been more or less faithfully carried down over the millennia, through the grim rationalizing of the World, and so the magic is still there, though latent, needing only to touch the right sensitive head to reassert itself. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Sometimes the hardest battle only exists within yourself, our mind fighting amongst the demons of thought within your own head. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

The genius of Freemasonry is not our Masonic buildings and temples or the trappings of our organizations. It is not our great charities or community activities. It is not our beautiful rituals or their teachings! It is the 'practice of Freemasonry' by the Freemasons. Yet we cannot practice that which we do not know or understand. Thus Masonic education is the foundation for our Fraternity.
Brother Carl H. Claudy in The Master's Book says, '.. one thing and only one thing a Masonic Lodge can give its members which they can get nowhere else in the world. That one thing is Masonry. ~ Carl H. Claudy

The true Mason is not creed-bound. He realizes with the divine illumination of his lodge that as Mason his religion must be universal: Christ, Buddha or Mohammed, the name means little, for he recognizes only the light and not the bearer. He worships at every shrine, bows before every altar, whether in temple, mosque or cathedral, realizing with his truer understanding the oneness of all spiritual truth. All true Masons know that they only are heathen who, having great ideals, do not live up to them. They know that all religions are but one story told in divers ways for peoples whose ideals differ but whose great purpose is in harmony with Masonic ideals. North, east, south and west stretch the diversities of human thought, and while the ideals of man apparently differ, when all is said and the crystallization of form with its false concepts is swept away, one basic truth remains: all existing things are Temple Builders, laboring for a single end. No true Mason can be narrow, for his Lodge is the divine expression of all broadness. There is no place for little minds in a great work. ~ Manly P. Hall

Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantlepiece. I've tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) To burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

CoMasonry, in that it admits women, is something different, something distinct from the other Masonic bodies," said the January 1913 edition of Universal CoMasonry.240 "It has not been organized and is not maintained in America to compete with any of them, to condemn or fight any of them, but to fill a role of its own and that is to bring together in one organization men and women of all nationalities and races, of all creeds and political beliefs and have them, through the greatest of all Masonic virtues, TOLERANCE, work in peace and harmony to hasten the day when Universal Brotherhood shall be a reality, understood and lived. ~ Karen Kidd

How many leaders in the Islamic world are really familiar with the ideas which underpin modernity? I have met some leaders of activist factions, and have been consistently shocked by their lack of knowledge. How many can even name the principal intellectual systems of our time? Structuralism, post-modernism, realism, analytic philosophy, critical theory, and all the rest are closed books to them. Instead they burble on about the 'International Zionist Masonic Conspiracy', or 'Baha'ism', or the 'New Crusader Invasion', or similar phantasms. If we want to understand why so many Islamic movements fail, we should perhaps begin by acknowledging that their leaders simply do not have the intellectual grasp of the modern world which is the precondition for successfully overcoming the obstacles to Islamic governance. A Muslim activist who does not understand the ideologies of modernism can hardly hope to overcome them.

Islam and the New Millennium ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

The B'nai B'rith is established by Jews in New York City as a Masonic Lodge. 70 years later this group will establish the notorious Anti-Defamation League, designed to promote any critics of Jewish supremacism or criminality, as, anti-Semitic. ~ Anonymous

Devoted to principles of liberty, equality, and religious tolerance
which, dear internet, is not necessarily the same thing as satanism
Masonic lodge became the de facto clubhouses of the Age of Reason. ~ Sarah Vowell

Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs. ~ Anthony Hecht

I think we are warranted in contending that a society thus constituted, and which may be rendered so admirable an engine of improvement, far from meriting reproach, deserves highly of the community. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

As Our Predecessors have many times repeated, let no man think that he may for any reason whatsoever join the Masonic sect, if he values his Catholic name and his eternal salvation as he ought to value them. Let no one be deceived by a pretense of honesty. It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion and morality; but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men or in any way to help them cannot be lawful ~ Pope Leo XIII

Concealing the Ripper was not a Masonic conspiracy, but a conspiracy of Her Majesty's executive, who almost without exception were Freemasons. In other words, it was a conspiracy of the System. ~ Bruce Robinson

Adult stories never made sense, and they were so slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn't adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies? ~ Neil Gaiman

Life as we know it is merely a dream within dreams. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges. ~ Ed Smith

Thus the American people were maneuvered into a Civil War which they neither envisioned nor desired. They were manipulated by Masonic Canaanite conspirators working together in the Northern and the Southern states. ~ Eustace Mullins

Strange and mysterious name to give to the spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not! ~ Albert Pike

Simon Greenleaf's Masonic work documents the relationship between defining the Patriarch Enoch as a Pythagorean figure while linking the Druidical priestly presence through Phoenician exploration from Egyptian source. Thus Enoch brought the content of Masonic knowledge to a greater mystical perfection as he was deemed to have caused the emergence of the restoration of learning from the vault into solar Apollonian radiance through the application of Pythagorean learning to the inspiration of the new Republic through mathematics and the laws derived from it. The result was for Greenleaf a pre- critical logic of unfolding of the Logos envisaged by Salem Town along lines delineated in the L'Enfant-Latrobe District of Columbia template from the national capital into districts of Masonic Grand Lodge administration was devolved into districts, paralleling judicial and congressional districts, symbolically as an extension of the Latrobe-L'Enfant template just after the moral and political defeat of Jedidiah Morse and the Federalists in 1800 and theological attacks on Masonry and before the onset of the Morgan fervor in 1826. This period enables the historian to see a sequence of Masonic and mythic legal unfolding from legendary history which linked the emergence of Enochic design to civil religion through monumental architecture which also links the dynamism of a Third Age of Masonic "Aquarian" millennialism rooted in third age eschatology within its Tudor derivative of an articulat ~ Robert W. Sullivan IV

I must learn to let go, let it all go, center myself and open my mind. The ideals, concepts and ideas of the self being separate from the whole of all consciousness must change. We are one large family, you are I, and I am you. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

The Masonic fraternity tramples upon our rights, defeats the administration of justice, and bids defiance to every government which it cannot control. ~ Millard Fillmore

If you don't know the whole story, shut up and listen. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

I regard the Masonic institution as one of the means ordained by the Supreme Architect to enable mankind to work out the problem of destiny; to fight against, and overcome, the weaknesses and imperfections of his nature, and at last to attain to that true life of which death is the herald and the grave the portal. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

To enlarge the sphere of social happiness is worthy of the benevolent design of a Masonic institution; and it is most fervently to be wished, that the conduct of every member of the fraternity, as well as those publications, that discover the principles which actuate them, may tend to convince mankind that the grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race.
[Letter to the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, January 1793] ~ George Washington

What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism. ~ Eliphas Levi

Estabrooks himself a 32nd degree Mason. Although the Masons are not implicated as an organization in CIA and military mind control, connections in the network of doctors were maintained in part through high rank Masons. ~ Colin A. Ross

When the British retreated after a skirmish in the revolutionary war, American troops found Masonic regalia and a book of constitutions left in the encampment the British had abandoned. General Washington himself returned the Masonic artifacts to the British troops, under a flag of truce, accompanied by an escort and a guard of honor. ~ Steven L. Harrison

The roots of Campanella's "Solar City" (and the District of Columbia) can be found in deeper occult parallels within the literature formulated by hermetical philosophers Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino in Renaissance Florence; both prophetically predicting the restoration of the Egyptian solar religion as the correct political theology of the planet and itself the model for a "New World" civil religion. In another words they believed the Abrahamic solar faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam would ultimately be exposed as substituted forms of Egyptian sun worship with in "New World" - the United States. It would be this "New World" that would midwife civilization from the waning Piscean Age into the "Masonic" Aquarian Age, a new age of the holy spirit. Simon Greenleaf's Druids and Campanella's Solarians are the de-facto "mediating" Joachimite order through which heavenly signs are mediated by a Sun Priest - an executive or President - who frames policy based upon his knowledge of the correspondences between science (i.e. Egyptian natural religion), grades of being, and heavenly correspondences. This polity was replicated from 1797 within the General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons with reference both to Enoch (cf. Webb's 1797 Monitor) and the priest king Melchizedek of which the Grand Master DeWitt Clinton became the symbolic presiding executive. This configuration is important to make because it establishes the position of the District of Columbia ~ Robert W. Sullivan IV

In a rational state it would be more appropriate to ensure that a cobbler passed an examination than an executive civil servant; because shoe-making is a craft in the absence of which it is still possible to be a good citizen and a man in society. But the necessary 'knowledge of the state' is a precondition in the absence of which one lives outside the state, cut off from the air one breathes and from oneself. Thus the 'examination' is nothing but a Masonic initiation, the legal recognition of the knowledge of citizenship, the acknowledgement of a privilege.

This 'link' between the 'individual' and his 'office', this objective bond between the knowledge of civil society and the knowledge of the state, namely the examination, is nothing but the bureaucratic baptism of knowledge, the official recognition of the transubstantiation of profane knowledge into sacred knowledge (it is plain that in every examination the examiner is omniscient).

It is not recorded that Greek and Roman statesmen ever took examinations. But then what is a Roman statesman compared to a Prussian civil servant! ~ Karl Marx

You can't get mad when it rains whereas you created the storm. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

The Masonic system represents a stupendous and beautiful fabric, founded on universal purity, to rule and direct our passions, to have faith and love in God, and charity toward man. ~ William Howard Taft

At the base of my right forefinger is an inch-and-a-half diagonal callus, yellowish-brown in color, where the heels of all the knives I've ever owned have rested, the skin softened by constant immersion in water. It distinguishes me immediately as a cook, as someone who's been on the job a long time. You can feel it when I shake my hand, just as I feel it on others of my profession. It's a secret sign, a sort of Masonic handshake without the silliness. ~ Anthony Bourdain

The Masonic aspect of Hollywood is so bizarre. ~ Minnie Driver

The taste of blood and that annoying sting of a bitten tongue. Once man got the taste of blood there was no going back, like a serpent circling itself eating its own tail. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

Everyone has a story. It is what defines us. Our stories continue to change as we evolve in-and-out of our own skin, changing and manipulating the world around us. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

Each lodge is an oasis if equality and good will in a desert of strife, working to wield mankind into a great league of sympathy and services, which, by the terms of our definition, it seeks to exhibit now on a small scale. ~ Joseph Fort Newton

The true Mason ever strives to cultivate Masonry in his/her life to the fullest degree possible. ~ William Howard Taft

The true Mason never hesitates to use the working tools to correct personal flaws. ~ William Howard Taft

So far as I am acquainted with the principles and doctrines of Freemasonry, I conceive it to be founded in benevolence and to be exercised only for the good of mankind. ~ George Washington

But it doesn't happen that way, I keep telling myself knowingly and sadly. Only in our fraternity pledges and masonic inductions, our cowboy movies and magazine stories, not in our real-life lives. For, the seventeenth-century humanist to the contrary, each man is an island complete unto himself, and as he sinks, the moving feet go on around him, from nowhere to nowhere and with no time to lose. The world is long past the Boy Scout stage of its development; now each man dies as he was meant to die, and as he was born, and as he lived: alone, all alone. Without any God, without any hope, without any record to show for his life.
("New York Blues") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Our Masonic friends have it down very fine. I do not know where they got it so well. I have often wondered where they found out so many of the secrets of our High and Accepted Order of Masonry. ~ Charles Taze Russell

The religion of Freemasonry is not Christian ~ Albert Mackey

Gradually the true Mason gains experience in using these working tools and can observe subtler and subtler indications of personal flaws. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The main reason why serious historical studies of the Rosicrucian manifestos and their influence have hitherto been on the whole lacking is no doubt because the whole subject has been bedevilled by enthusiasts for secret societies. There is a vast literature on Rosicrucianism which assumes the existence of a secret society, founded by Christian Rosencreutz, and having a continuous existence up to modern times. In the vague and inaccurate world of so-called 'occultist' writing this assumption has produced a kind of literature which deservedly sinks below the notice of the serious historian. And when, as if often the case, the misty discussion of 'Rosicrucians' and their history becomes involved with the masonic myths, the enquirer feels that he is sinking helplessly into a bottomless bog. ~ Frances A. Yates

We all have to pay till the day we die, just to breathe the air and exist in this world. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

Freemasonry is a science of symbols, in which, by their proper study, a search is instituted after truth, that truth consisting in the knowledge of the divine and human nature of God and the human Soul. ~ Albert Mackey

It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God. ~ H. P. Blavatsky

We Masons are among the fortunate ones who are taught to meet together with others opposing convictions or competitive ideas and yet respect each other as Brothers. ~ Albert Pike

Freemasonry is an establishment founded on the benevolent intention of extending and conferring mutual happiness upon the best and truest principles of moral life and social virtue. ~ Andrew Jackson

And man has sought immortality. A writer, if he is a good writer, seeks immortality through his books, through his words, through his thoughts. He is there, at least he is there, he thinks, permanently. There is nothing permanent. There is no permanency of you. Others seek immortality in history - the politicians, the kings. But you and I are not writers; we are not kings; we don't make history. We are ordinary people, living with trouble, pain, anxiety, not knowing, confused, with a little affection, we are the ordinary people. And also we want immortality. We have never asked what is immortality. That is, not mortality, immortality means no dying. And if one has gone into it very deeply, one sees there is nothing permanent, nothing, either on earth or in yourself. Which isn't a despair, which isn't something to be frightened of. And when you see there is nothing permanent, that very observation, that very perception is the highest form of intelligence. And intelligence, which is not personal, which is not yours, or mine, is the everlasting. And from there the mind becomes infinite, because it is no longer caught in attachment, it is no longer seeking anything, any experience. It is completely a light to itself and therefore eternal.

from:J. Krishnamurti 3rd Public Talk Masonic Auditorium San Francisco 23rd March 1975 ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

One day at a time, one round at a time, one step at time. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

The true Mason is ever vigilant for subtle traces of character and personality flaws which daily experience brings out. ~ William Howard Taft

Gypsy [Rose Lee], who was called Louise as a kid, gave her first performances here with her sister [June Hovac], playing for the local Masonic lodge halls. It was a tight-knit community, and the support and success the act enjoyed here enabled them to hit the road and make it in big-time vaudeville. ~ Karen Abbott

The Masonic movement ... is the custodian of the law; it is the home of the Mysteries and the seat of initiation. It holds in its symbolism the ritual of Deity, and the way of salvation is pictorially preserved in its work. It is a far more occult organization than can be realised, and is intended to be the training school for the coming advanced occultists. In its ceremonials lie hid the wielding of the forces connected with the growth and life of the kingdoms of nature and the unfoldment of the divine aspects in man. ~ Alice Bailey

I am very glad to have this particular opportunity of saying a word about some of the things in which we agree with our Masonic friends, because we are speaking in a building dedicated to Masonry, and we also are Masons. I am a Freemason. ~ Charles Taze Russell

Motivation gets you started, and inspiration keeps you going. ~ Brandon Garic Notch

Here are the folks that are involved in this New World Order: The United Nations [ ... ] the World Council of Churches [ ... ] the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers [ ... ] the International Monetary Fund [ ... ] the Club of Rome, the communists, the socialists, the National Education Association [ ... ] the NOW organisation, the ACLU, the Masonic Lodge. ~ Kent Hovind

Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion; and its teachings are instruction in religion. ~ Albert Pike

There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest. ~ Albert Pike

Freemasonry is an institution calculated to benefit mankind. ~ Andrew Jackson

Masonic labor is purely a labor of love. He who seeks to draw Masonic wages in gold and silver will be disappointed. The wages of a Mason are in the dealings with one another; sympathy begets sympathy, kindness begets kindness, helpfulness begets helpfulness, and these are the wages of a Mason. ~ Benjamin Franklin

From its origin to the present hour, in all its vicissitudes, Masonry has been the steady unwearing friend of man. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Freemasonry is a moral order, instituted by virtuous men, with the praiseworthy design of recalling to our remembrance the most sublime truths, in the midst of the most innocent and social pleasures, founded on liberality, brotherly love and charity. ~ Andrew Jackson

The George Washington Masonic National Memorial is a fitting tribute to so great a man and Mason. Its message should be as prominent in our lives as the Memorial itself in the skyline of the Federal City. Wherever we are, in Alexandria, Virginia, the District of Columbia of should be in our moral horizon, beckoning us to greater achievements as citizens and Masons. ~ Henry Clausen

A secret is powerful when it is empty. ~ Umberto Eco