Spanisg Inquisition Quotes

By its vigilance and by coordinating its efforts throughout the peninsula, it may be argued that the Inquisition checked the seeds of heresy before they could be sown. This view, however, is both naïve and optimistic. At no time in history have governments been able to identify and eliminate security threats before they happen. ~ Henry Kamen

No one ever expects vaginal arthritis. (Or the Spanish Inquisition). ~ Jenny Lawson

More people died on 9/11, in one day, at the hand of Muslim terrorists than during the Inquisition. ~ Robert Jeffress

As already noted, "Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine. ~ Dave Hunt

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope! Um, I'll come in again ... ~ Graham Chapman

Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us! ~ Marcel Leroux

Professional self-preservation as well as political correctness and economics has affected academic research in certain fields of study, in contrast to the fearlessness demonstrated by professors when unmasking horrors in such dangerous areas of investigation as Christian Europe (the burning of witches! colonialism!) and Catholic Spain (the ubiquitous Spanish Inquisition!). Islamic Spain is no exception to the rule. University presses do not want to get in trouble presenting an Islamic domination of even centuries ago as anything but a positive event, and academic specialists would rather not portray negatively a subject that constitutes their bread and butter. In addition, fear of the accusation of 'Islamophobia' has paralyzed many academic researchers. ~ Darío Fernández-Morera

Greed is empowered by knowledge, but we shouldn't be burning books or reject such knowledge, as what happened during the Inquisition and World War 2. We should instead share it and learn it. ~ Daniel Marques

Who originated that most exquisite of inquisitions, the condolence system? ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

By their peculiar "reasoning," too, theologians have sanctioned most of the ills of the ages. They justified the Inquisition, serfdom, and slavery. Theologians of our time defend segregation and the annihilation of one race by the other. They have drifted away from righteousness into an effort to make wrong seem to be right. ~ Carter G. Woodson

Let's say that the God the Christians pray to is real. He actually exists. But this God is the same as the one that the Jews pray to and the same as the one that the Muslims pray to and whatever other religions are praying to a God, He is the one. One God with many faces. Most of these religions contain the myth of the Anti-Christ, a being who will come one day and lead the world astray, lead the world to a place of sin and evil. Who could this Anti-Christ be ... Consider the God with many faces. How many wars have been fought in His Name? How many people have been beaten, jailed, and maimed to prove His points. Think of the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Salem, and the Sudan. All of these tragedies carried out in His name. Why is it accepted that He is a force for good? If we were to look for the Anti-Christ just by his accomplishments, wouldn't we clearly suspect the being who is the cause of so much woe? ~ S.T. Rogers

Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame. ~ Umberto Eco

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

I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact? ~ T. S. Eliot

We are surrounded by the dry thorns of the Inquisition on all four sides; throwing around words burning like fire is the shortest way to one's grave! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

When the kingdom of God is manifested, it's obvious. It looks like Jesus. But America as a nation has clearly never looked remotely like Jesus. There was nothing distinctively Christlike about the way America was "discovered," conquered, or governed in the early years. To the contrary, the way this nation was "discovered," conquered, and governed was a rather typical, barbaric, violent, kingdom-of-the-world affair. The immoral barbarism displayed in the early (and subsequent) years of this country was, sadly, pretty typical by kingdom-of-the-world standards. The fact that it was largely done under the banner of Christ doesn't make it more Christian, any more than any other bloody conquest done in Jesus' name throughout history (such as the Crusades and the Inquisition) qualifies them as Christlike. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' m ~ Wilhelm Reich

In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches. ~ Carl Sagan

People afraid of outsiders are easily manipulated. The warrior caste, supposedly society's protectors, often become protection racketeers. In times of war or crisis, power is easily stolen from the many by the few on a promise of security. The more elusive or imaginary the foe, the better for manufacturing consent. The Inquisition did a roaring trade against the Devil. ~ Ronald Wright

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

I wanted to know how much of conversion was forced - that is, forced in the sense that the Inquisition forced people to choose - forced Jews, let's say, and Muslims to choose conversion to Christianity or death. I wanted to see how much of conversion historically was forced in that way and how much of it was really a kind of persuasion. ~ Susan Jacoby

But why?" Gabriel asks. "Why do they wish to cause such pain to another human?"
"Why does the Spanish Inquisition do what it does?" I ask. "Why does our own Church burn witches at the stake? Why did our own crusaders punish the Moors so exquisitely?"
Gabriel thinks about this. He knows I don't beg answers for these questions.
"Of course it's easy to say that we mete out punishment to those who are an abomination in God's eyes," I say. "But it's more than that, isn't it? I think we don't just allow torturers but condone them as a way to excise the fear we all have of death. To torture someone is to take control of death, to be the master of it, even for a short time. ~ Joseph Boyden

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain. ~ Tony Benn

Why didn't you call?" Taylor asked.
"I did. No one answered." Roo bent to refill her handbag.
Ah. "So how were going to get in the house?"
"I thought I'd just wait for you to come back." She started to tap her foot.
"Why didn't you go home and call a locksmith?" Taylor asked.
Roo glared. "What is this? The Spanish Inquisition?" Then she grinned. "Oh, I've waited years to say that."
Taylor bit back his laugh. ~ Barbara Elsborg

The beatings at Repton were more fierce and more frequent than anything I had yet experienced. And do not think for one moment that the future Archbishop of Canterbury objected to these squalid exercises. He rolled up his sleeves and joined in with gusto. His were the bad ones, the really terrifying occasions. Some of the beatings administered by this man of God, this future Head of the Church of England, were very brutal. To my certain knowledge he once had to produce a basin of water, a sponge and a towel so that the victim could wash the blood away afterwards. No joke, that. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition. ~ Roald Dahl

It is of interest to note that most secular humanists continue to belabor the horrors of the Inquisition in order to establish the moral depravity of Christianity. ~ Guenter Lewy

The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

To be fair to the Inquisition, they only used confessions extracted after the torture had ended, which let them claim that admissions had been freely given; the fact that the torture would have started again if they hadn't confessed was a minor detail. ~ Simon Hoggart

No offense against moral order was too trivial to escape the attention of the Spanish Inquisition. ~ Jonathan Kirsch

Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church. ~ Edgar Mitchell

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education. ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunegonde, if you hadn't been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn't traveled across America on foot, if you hadn't given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn't lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn't be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios. - That is very well put, said Candide, but we must cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire

Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. ~ Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I believe that the very act of believing in something causes us to distance ourselves from that thing, thus a duality is created: oneself and the thing in which one believes. Now since we all know that in order to fully understand a thing one must be that thing -- walk a mile in its shoes so to speak -- it seems obvious that the state of believing in something inevitably causes us to not truly understand that thing in which we believe. This noncomprehension leads to all sorts of difficulties. "I believe in love" has a better than even chance of leading to divorce, while "I believe in God" seems to end in variations on the Spanish Inquisition. But -- and it's a big but -- if one were love, one couldn't help but be affectionate and caring towards oneself and others. If one were God, one would act toward all beings and all things as if they were one's own creations. And that, my friends, is the secret of life in a two-second vanity card. Of course, the secret could also be "Sit, Ubu, sit." We have to keep an open mind ~ Chuck Lorre

This is outrageous and demonstrates the danger of permitting religion in the public square," Liebowitz said. "History teaches us, or should have by now, that wars caused by religion, and especially Christianity, have killed more people than all other causes, combined."

"I'm afraid that's not accurate. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot each killed millions and they were all confirmed atheists," Cardinal Guzetti replied. "Remember the Great Peoples Cultural Revolution? Over twenty million died before it was over. The killing fields in Cambodia claimed the lives of unknown millions, but some estimates suggest twenty five percent of the country's population died at the hands of the Camere Rouge. Joseph Stalin starved ten to twelve million Russian peasant farmers to death and killed another two million building the great Canal outside of Moscow. All three of these monsters were confirmed atheists . . . Probably five thousand people were killed during the Inquisition. In America, thirteen were put on trial during the Salem witch trials. Horrible and indefensible, no doubt. But millions of human beings were slaughtered by Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao. I'm afraid we Christians are amateurs compared to you atheists. ~ Joseph Max Lewis