The Heretic Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

Everyone smokes in Corrientes. If anyone ever dared to hint that it wasn't healthy, they'd stand looking at the heretic, confused, and then give a little laugh. ~ Mariana Enríquez

Theban who acquires his wealth by inheritance builds his mansion with the weak poor's money. The clergyman erects his temple upon the graves and bones of the devoted worshippers. The prince grasps the fellah's arms while the priest empties his pocket; the ruler looks upon the sobs of the fields with frowning face, and the bishop consoles them with his smile, and between the frown of the tiger and the smile of the wolf the flock is perished; the ruler claims himself as king if the law, and the priest as the representative if god, and between these two, the bodies are destroyed and the souls wither into nothing. ~ Kahlil Gibran

And now that they had met and begun to see more of one another, she seemed to have fallen in love with him. A new problem with women loomed on the horizon for Hesse. That was the worst thing he could imagine: he found the prospect of entering into binding relationships with other people hard to take. This too was down to the heretic and the mystic in him, who shunned anything that threatened to formalize and institutionalize a living feeling - be that the established Church or the institution of marriage. This extreme self-centeredness was narcissistic. But in this, Hesse was far from being an exception among artists. ~ Gunnar Decker

We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. we do not destroy the heretic because he resist us: so long as he resist us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. ~ George Orwell

in the ballroom of the Metropol Hotel on the twenty-first of June 1926, was the heretic, Galileo of Galilei, vindicated by a ping, a splat, a smash, a thunk, a thump, and a thud. Of ~ Amor Towles

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

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

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

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

False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

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

What I am is a heretic who's recanted and, thereby, in everyone's eyes, saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

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

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

Conformists die, but heretics live forever. ~ Elbert Hubbard

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

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

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

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

I was born a heretic. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony, U.S. reformer and suffragist ~ George Washington

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

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

I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows. ~ Susan B. Anthony

If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Thieves, Heretics, and Whores ~ Patrick Rothfuss

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

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

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

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