The Grand Inquisitor Quotes

And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He turned his head just then and for a moment, our eyes met. I would like to tell you that I saw the face of evil when I looked at the Grand Inquisitor, but in fact he seemed like so many men who serve Holy Mother Church: a bureaucrat for whom the suffering of humanity is of no account compared to his imagined visions of the will of God. It is said that the Devil enters through back doors and in disguise, but men such as Torquemada never seemed to consider that. He is dead now, as I tell this tale. I wonder how warmly the One he served welcomed him into eternity. ~ Sara Poole

Others will appear, with more serious intentions, who, on the basis of
the same despairing nihilism, will insist on ruling the world. These are the Grand Inquisitors who
imprison Christ and come to tell Him that His method is not correct, that universal happiness cannot be
achieved by the immediate freedom of choosing between good and evil, but by the domination and
unification of the world. The first step is to conquer and rule. The kingdom of heaven will, in fact, appear
on earth, but it will be ruled over by men - a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Cassars,
because they were the first to understand - and later, with time, by all men. The unity of all creation will
be achieved by every possible means, since everything is permitted. The Grand Inquisitor is old and tired,
for the knowledge he possesses is-bitter. He knows that men are lazy rather than cowardly and that they
prefer peace and death to the liberty of discerning between good and evil. He has pity, a cold pity, for the
silent prisoner whom history endlessly deceives. He urges him to speak, to recognize his misdeeds, and,
in one sense, to approve the actions of the Inquisitors and of the Caesars. But the prisoner does not speak.
The enterprise will continue, therefore, without him; he will be killed. ~ Albert Camus

The truly great books are flawed: The Brothers Karamazov is unwieldy in structure; a present-day editor would probably want to cut the Grand Inquisitor scene because it isn't necessary to the plot. For me The Brothers Karamazov is one of the greatest novels ever written, and this is perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, its human faults. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Some of my colleagues want to be The Anchorman on the Mount. Others see themselves as the Ace Reporter. Because of 60 Minutes, there's a whole herd of them determined to be The Grand Inquisitor and a heady number want only to be The Friendliest Anchor on the Block. At least one wants to be Jesus. ~ Linda Ellerbee

My poem is called 'The Grand Inquisitor' - an absurd thing, but I want you to hear it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.
–The Grand Inquisitor ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Now, religion professes a special role in the protection and instruction of children. "Woe to him," says the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, "who harms a child." The New Testament has Jesus informing us that one so guilty would be better off at the bottom of the sea, and with a millstone around his neck at that. But both in theory and in practice, religion uses the innocent and the defenseless for the purposes of experiment. By all means let an observant Jewish adult male have his raw-cut penis placed in the mouth of a rabbi. (That would be legal, at least in New York.) By all means let grown women who distrust their clitoris or their labia have them sawn away by some other wretched adult female. By all means let Abraham offer to commit filicide to prove his devotion to the Lord or his belief in the voices he was hearing in his head. By all means let devout parents deny themselves the succor of medicine when in acute pain and distress. By all means - for all I care - let a priest sworn to celibacy be a promiscuous homosexual. By all means let a congregation that believes in whipping out the devil choose a new grown-up sinner each week and lash him until he or she bleeds. By all means let anyone who believes in creationism instruct his fellows during lunch breaks. But the conscription of the unprotected child for these purposes is something that even the most dedicated secularist can safely describe as sin. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Consider that in 1800 Western powers claimed 55 percent but actually held approximately 35 percent of the earth's surface, and that by 1874 the proportion was 67 percent, a rate of increase of 83,000 square miles per year. By 1914, the annual rate had risen to an astonishing 240,000 square miles [per year], and Europe held a grand total of roughly 85 percent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths. No other associated set of colonies in history was as large, none so totally dominated, none so unequal in power to the Western metropolis." Culture and Imperialism, pg. 8 ~ Edward Said

It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest. ~ John Ruskin

No government can exist without taxation. The money must necessarily be levied on the people; and the grand art consists of levying so as not to oppress. ~ Frederick The Great

The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders ... and millions have been killed because of this obedience ... Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves ... (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. ~ Howard Zinn

I devoutly hope you are wrong, my dear," replied his lordship humourously. "For when my father
uses every means to achieve an end, he invariably does achieve it."
Miss Challoner got up, smiling a little ironically. "Vastly pretty, my lord. I could almost suppose that
you wanted to marry me."
She moved towards the door which his lordship held open for her. "I assure you, ma'am, I am
becoming hourly more reconciled to the prospect," he said, and surprised her by taking her hand and
kissing it, very much in the grand manner. ~ Georgette Heyer

Every bit of you has been replaced many times over ... The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, whilst simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. ~ Steve Grand

She reshelved the sixpack and wrenched herself away to less compelling parts of the store, but it was hard to plan dinner when you felt like throwing up. She returned to the beer shelves like a bird repeating its song. The various beer cans had different decorations but all contained the identical weak low-end brew. It occurred to her to drive to Grand Rapids and buy some actual wine. It occurred to her to drive back to the house without buying anything at all. But then where would she be? A weariness set in as she stood and vacillated: a premonition that none of the possible impending outcomes would bring enough relief or pleasure to justify her current heart-racing wretchedness. She saw, in other words, what it meant to have become a deeply unhappy person. ~ Jonathan Franzen

My grandfather often felt frustrated or baffled by my grandmother's illness, but when it came to the origins of the Skinless Horse he thought he understood. The Skinless Horse was a creature sworn to pursue my grandmother no matter where she went on the face of the globe, whispering to her in the foulest terms of her crimes and the blackness of her soul. There was a voice like that in everyone's head, he figured; in my grandmother's case it was just a matter of degree. You could almost see the Skinless Horse as a clever adapation, a strategy for survival evolved by a proven survivor. If you kept the voice inside your head, the way most people did, there could really be only one way to silence it. He admired the defiance, the refusal to surrender, involuntary but implicit in the act of moving that reproachful whisperer to a shadowy corner of a room, an iron furnace in a cellar, the branches of a grand old tree. ~ Michael Chabon

People who do not consciously choose to live a sensual lifestyle, in essence, don't take the relationship they have with themselves or others that seriously. ~ Lebo Grand

In those moments of moving through the streets with people who share one's beliefs comes the rare and magical possibility of a kind of populist communion ... At such times it is as though the still small pool of one's own identity has been overrun by a great flood, bringing its own grand collective desires and resentments, scouring out that pool so thoroughly that one no longer feels fear or sees the reflections of oneself but is carried along on that insurrectionary surge. These moments when individuals find others who share their dreams, when fear is overwhelmed by idealism or by outrage, when people feel a strength that surprises them, are moments in which they become heroes - for what are heroes but those so motivated by ideals that fear cannot sway them, those who speak for us, those who have power for good? A person who never feels it is condemned to cynicism and isolation. In those moments everyone becomes a visionary, everyone becomes a hero. ~ Rebecca Solnit

It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that ... [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet. ~ Julian Barnes

Let the grand errand into America never be forgotten. ~ Ezra Stiles

Legitimacy will come at the end of time, when the kingdom of men is assured. "The affair has only just
begun, it is far from being terminated, and the world has many other things to suffer, but we shall achieve
our aim, we shall be Caesar, and then we shall begin to think about universal happiness."
By then the prisoner has been executed; the Grand Inquisitors reign alone, listening to "the profound
spirit, the spirit of destruction and death." The Grand Inquisitors proudly refuse freedom and the bread of
heaven and offer the bread of this earth without freedom. "Come down from the cross and we will believe
in you," their police agents are already crying on Golgotha. But He did not come down and, even, at the
most tortured moment of His agony, He protested to God at having been forsaken. There are, thus, no
longer any proofs, but faith and the mystery that the rebels reject and at which the Grand Inquisitors scoff.
Everything is permitted and centuries of crime are prepared in that cataclysmic moment. From Paul to
Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise
popes. The unity of the world, which was not achieved with God, will henceforth be attempted in defiance
of God. ~ Albert Camus

A man has to be pulled and kept by the sensual aura of your being. ~ Lebo Grand

Things like this don't happen all that often in one lifetime. This is the magnificent world of a picaresque novel. Just brace yourself and enjoy the smell of evil. We're shooting the rapids. And when we go over the falls, let's do it together in grand style! ~ Haruki Murakami

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

In a great library, you get into society in the widest sense ... From that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in these silent gatherings ... the highest is at the service of the lowest with a grand humility. In a library you become a true citizen of the world. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

You have your own difficulties. We watch, with friendly confidence in your capacity to merge differences in the grand dream of Canadian design. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Every bourgeois in the ferment of his youth, if only for a day or a minute, has believed himself capable of a grand passion, of a high endeavor. Every run-of-the-mill seducer has dreamed of Eastern queens. Not a lawyer but carries within him the débris of a poet. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Isn't it grand, isn't it good, that language has only one word for everything we associate with love - from utter sanctity to the most fleshly lust? The result is perfect clarity in ambiguity, for love cannot be disembodied even in its most sanctified forms, nor is it without sanctity even at its most fleshly. Love is always simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion; love is our sympathy with organic life. ~ Thomas Mann

The bathroom door opened and Griff emerged in a cloud of steam, the grand entrance of every B-movie alien I'd ever seen. Maybe this wasn't Griff at all but some interstellar prankster setting me up. Forget about abductions, anal probes and secret alien cookbooks - the real fun was in poking at the Earthlings' old heartaches. ~ Ben Monopoli

Now you're going to get it," I said, guessing Al was coming when the ones in the back scattered. "You should have been nice."
With a weird cry, the closest surface demon fell back, but it was too late. A flash of red light exploded overhead, smashing the buildings away as if I were at the center of an atomic explosion. The surface demons scattered like brown leaves, the remnants of their clothes and auras fluttering. It was Al, and he burst into existence in a grand mood, an old-fashioned lantern in his hand and a walking cane at his side.
"Rachel Mariana Morgan!" he shouted enthusiastically, raising the lantern high, and I painfully rose from my crouch, breaking my bubble with a small thought. "I've come to save you, love! ~ Kim Harrison

I'll bet Grand Admiral Pellaeon doesn't take this long to get himself together.
I'll bet the Grand Admiral sleeps in his uniform.

Leia Cal Omas ~ Shane Dix

He then offered one of the most infamous pronouncements that has ever been made about the Grand Canyon: Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed. . . . Excepting when the melting snows send their annual torrents through the avenues to the Colorado, conveying with them sound and motion, these dismal abysses, and the arid table-lands that enclose them, are left as they have been for ages, in unbroken solitude and silence. That ~ Kevin Fedarko

The type of relationship you have with your own desires is fundamentally determined by either the noise and toxicity that's in your mind or the love and passion that's in your soul. ~ Lebo Grand

The question is, How can you see the divine intersection of all that shapes and marks your existence, whether it be the heart-wrenching tragedies that wound you or the ecstasy of a great delight that brings laughter to your soul? How can you meet God in all your appointments and your disappointments? How can you recognize that he has a purpose, even when all around seems senseless, if not hopeless? Will there be a last gasp that whispers in one word a conclusion that redefines everything? If so, is it possible to borrow from that word to enrich the now? Can we really see, even a little, the patterned convergence of everything into some grand design? ~ Ravi Zacharias

This could be the last night of our lives, certainly the last even barely ordinary one. The last night we go to sleep and get up just as we always have. And all I could think of was that I wanted to spend it with you."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Jace-"
"I don't mean it like that," he said. "I won't touch you, not if you don't want me to. I know it's wrong - God, it's all kinds of wrong - but I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life." There was desperation in his voice. "It's just this one night. In the grand scheme of things, how much can this one night matter?"
... There was nothing she had ever wanted in her life more than she wanted this night with Jace.
"Close the curtains, then, before you come to bed," she said. "I can't sleep with this much light in the room. ~ Cassandra Clare

The professor's motive was in the grand scheme of things terribly petty " Greenwood said. ""Pilate's Cross" is inspired by the questions this terrible crime created but as a work of fiction it is set in a different place and time and has a more complex motive for the murders. ~ J. Alexander Greenwood

All thrones should be made of ice, I think.

Sit on that numb arse, sinking down and down, with the puddle of dissolution getting ever wider around you. Sit, dear ruler, and tell me all your grand designs. ~ Steven Erikson

Your name is Do Kyungsoo. You have short-term memory loss, antesomething amnesia, so you won't remember what happened last night. But let me help you out.

Last night I put my head on this pillow and my arms around your waist. My name's Kim Jongin. I call you hyung. Yesterday you loved me. Today you'll love me again.

This is where you undressed me.

This is where I undressed you.

And here I pushed you up against the wall and kissed you really hard (approximately, it was kind of dark) and we thought we should have sex.

Here you sat, dangling your legs. I put my palm on your kneecap and you bent forward and kissed me first.

We talked about ballet. You hummed a tune and my fingers did an arabresque here, grand jeté onto the floor, fouetté en tourant and then sissonne on the back of your hand. Pas de valse fast up your arm and you smiled.

I leaned on this and read your green sticky notes while you went around cleaning up invisible messes. It came to me that all the green looks like grass, and grass is boring without daisies. So I hope you like yellow?

And here's Kim Jongin. Say hello to me? ~ Changdictator