Varric Inquisition Quotes

There's power in stories, though. That's all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine. ~ Varric Tethras

Look seeker, if you love a character, you give them pain, ruin their lives, make them suffer. Maybe even throw in a heroic death! ~ Varric Tethras

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!! ~ Michael Palin

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition. ~ Elie Wiesel

I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition. ~ Lynne Tillman

When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself. ~ Voltaire

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

...the workings of the Inquisition did not fundamentally change over its six-hundred-year history. The Inquisition was a machine with interchangeable parts, just as its inventors had intended... ~ Jonathan Kirsch

I feel like Galileo going before the Inquisition to explain that the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth. I hope I have more success. ~ Ken Livingstone

Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition. ~ Frank Zappa

The judicial methods used by the Communists in our day are the same as those of the Holy Inquisition. To secure the Reign of Terror, the Communists are as brutal as the Christian Church was during a long period of thirteen hundred years, for the same end. Christianity and Communism, - the Judaic Twins - in merciless brutality do not differ from each other. - The history book of the Holy Inquisition became the textbook of the Communist secret police. ~ Anton U. Brown

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

More men and women were slaughtered in a couple of weeks of the terror of the atheistic French Revolution than in a century of the Inquisition. ~ Michael Coren

We condemn the Inquisition in the name of Christian values. After all, we can't condemn it in the name of the Mahabharata, which is comprised of a series of alternating murders, rather like the Iliad! ~ Rene Girard

As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites. ~ Voltaire

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition. ~ George Orwell

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

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

Inquisition as such, that is, apart from methods and severity of results, has remained a live institution. The many dictatorships of the 20C have relied on it and in free countries it thrives ad hoc - Hunting down German sympathizers during the First World War, interning Japanese-Americans during the second, and pursuing Communist fellow-travelers during the Cold War. In the United States at the present time the workings of "political correctness" in universities and the speech police that punishes persons and corporations for words on certain topics quaintly called "sensitive" are manifestations of the permanent spirit of inquisition. ~ Jacques Barzun

I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division. ~ Edward Kennedy

We cannot permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free. ~ Calvin Coolidge

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 important question to ask is why these bodies are allowed to exist. If a country such as Spain allowed a repressive body like the Inquisition to exist for four hundred years, it is not because the Inquisition forced itself on the Spanish nation. It is because the Spaniards allowed it to exist. ~ Cullen Murphy

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

I bet you don't have to be Spanish to be the Spanish Inquisition," said Adam. "I bet it's like Scottish eggs or American hamburgers. It just has to look Spanish. We've just got to make it look Spanish. Then everyone would know it's the Spanish Inquisition. ~ Terry Pratchett

At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition. ~ Jean Cocteau

Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy. ~ Anthony Hopkins

The Philippines is a terrible name, coming from Spain. Phillip II was the father of the inquisition, who I believe died of syphilis. It is my great regret that we didn't change the name of our country. ~ Imelda Marcos

This was the end of the Renaissance. Culture, once beloved and fostered by the papacy, opened the way to dangerous freedom. Then - as now - knowledge, culture, intellectual curiosity became suspect, even dangerous to oppressive regimes: knowledge leading to engaging the mind into reasoning, culture into wanting to know more, intellectual curiosity sharpening the appetite for information, fact. Ignorance was considered safe and political oppression went hand in hand with the congregation of the Inquisition. ~ Gaia Servadio

To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori ... ~ Edward Abbey

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

Of course not all dissenters openly proclaimed their disloyalty to Rome. There were secret heretics who had to be sought out diligently. The method devised was the Inquisition, in the opinion of Egyptian author Rollo Ahmed, "the most pitiless and ferocious institution the world has ever known" in its destruction of lives, property, morals, and human rights. Lord Acton, a Catholic, called the Inquisition "murderous" and declared that the popes "were not only murderers in the great style, but they made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and the condition of salvation. ~ Dave Hunt

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

I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism ... The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. ~ Saul Alinsky

Babies: more like the Spanish Inquisition than you think. ~ Cassandra Clare

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

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 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

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

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone. ~ Thomas Hardy

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? ~ Guy De Maupassant

Her hair was pulled back so severely, it would have won approval from the Spanish Inquisition as a method of torture. ~ Will Thomas

But, alas, nobody anticipated the United States Department of Homeland Security. ~ Richard Dawkins

Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, made a comment that sounds almost prophetic now: that the happy, primitive society (which, by the way, never existed) is lost for all those who have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, Popper warns, the more certainly we will reach the Inquisition, the secret police, and a romanticized gangsterism. But once the existential problems of the individual, who is good by nature, can be blamed on the "evil" society, nothing stands in the way of sheer imagination. The definition of the benevolent society free of all power is only a question of fantasy. ~ Paul Watzlawick

In 1231, Pope Gregory ordered the Dominicans to take charge of papal courts and decisions and so prevent mob rule and guarantee that the accused received a fair trial and the right of defence. This was the foundation of the Inquisition, and it was a move to organize, control, and limit violence, disruption, and division. Of course, it often failed and even achieved the opposite of its stated and original purpose, but it's surprising how often in an age of casual and brutal violence a relative moderation and legality was achieved. Civil law was far harsher than canon law, demanding confiscation of a heretic's property and usually death, something the Church had tried to prevent for generations. ~ Michael Coren

The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory. ~ Thomas Jefferson

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican - we have only to recall the Inquisition - the hands that are now raised in appeals to the 'Most Merciful' are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood! ~ John William Draper

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

Indeed, the greatest single innovation of the Spanish Inquisition was to turn heresy from a thought-crime into a blood-crime... ~ Jonathan Kirsch

Fear breeds a desire for simplicity. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Chains of command. ~ Solas

The guy appeared to be on the verge of tears.
"Zere is no more bread," he confessed tragically, like someone admitting witchcraft to the Inquisition. ~ Karen Chance

Good questions are to be appreciated, not answered. ~ Raheel Farooq

This was interesting knowledge: you could only ask questions in certain rooms. There were rooms for sitting and thinking and rooms for inquisition. ~ Matt Haig

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

At the end of the sermon, all the faithful were to come forward and take an oath of allegiance to the Holy Inquisition. ~ Jeffrey Gorsky

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

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

The Catholic Inquisition is well-known for its persecutions, but the Protestants were no better. An infamous example of Protestant evil, an example given by Thomas Jefferson, is the execution of Michael Servetus. A Spanish physician, Servetus wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity makes no sense, that it contradicts the idea that there is only one God. Servetus was condemned to die by the Catholic Inquisition, but he wasn't present, so they couldn't kill him. He had fled to Protestant Switzerland, expecting to be protected there. Instead, the city leaders in Geneva, with the approval of John Calvin (one of the great fathers of Protestant thought) and other Protestant leaders across Europe, had Servetus burned alive (with green wood to give him longer to repent) in 1553. ~ Russ Kick

You think her innocent/ Your little lost girl/ Caped in Inquisition red/ Yet when she leads you hunting Hyde/ Mind don't slay Jekyll in his stead ~ Shannon Barnsley

That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history. ~ Thomas Howard

People were always asking for good sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast, even in countries where the Inquisition can read your very thoughts in your eyes. ~ Thornton Wilder

Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned. ~ Giordano Bruno

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

It was a perfectly normal gerbil. It appeared to be living in an exciting construction of cylinders, spheres and treadmills, such as the Spanish Inquisition would have devised if they'd had access to a plastics molding press. ~ Neil Gaiman

In America today, anything the male gender says that has the slightest perception of inferred suggestion about the female gender, whether complimentary or offensive -- an inquisition is immediately convened, and charges of sexism created. ~ John T. Carden

Accent is the last great redoubt of prejudice. The race relations industry, that inquisition of fairness and sensitivity, doesn't protect against discrimination by funny voice. You can mock an accent with impunity, and everyone does ~ A.A. Gill

This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. ~ Camille Paglia

The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests. ~ Sam Harris

There are today many Communists in America. They are everywhere -- in factories, offices, butcher stores, on street corners, in private businesses. And each carries in himself the germ of death for society. ~ J. Howard McGrath

In 1487 alone, two hundred heretics had-in one of the greatest euphemisms in the history of language-"relaxed," that is, burned at the stake.
Dogs of God, Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors ~ James Reston, Jr.

That's not what I asked," she said, a noticeable edge in her voice. "I asked why my father shot him."
He sighed. She could have found gainful employment with the Spanish Inquisition, he thought
ruefully; no chance of escape or evasion. ~ Diana Gabaldon

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

This is a theater," Bertie, annoyed by the inquisition, dropped him onto stage. Several feet of slack cable landed atop the fairy in a slithering heap.
"Oh!" Peaseblossom said. "You've buried him alive! ~ Lisa Mantchev

Believe me,' [ ... ] 'I would know about it. That's the difference between me and your girlfriend. I am the jealous type. I am the Spanish Inquisition when it comes to being fucked around on. No quarter will be given. ~ Jonathan Franzen

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

Secularism should not be equated with Stalinist dogmatism or with the bitter fruits of Western imperialism and runaway industrialisation. Yet it cannot shirk all responsibility for them, either. Secular movements and scientific institutions have mesmerised billions with promises to perfect humanity and to utilise the bounty of planet Earth for the benefit of our species. Such promises resulted not just in overcoming plagues and famines, but also in gulags and melting ice caps. You might well argue that this is all the fault of people misunderstanding and distorting the core secular ideals and the true facts of science. And you are absolutely right. But that is a common problem for all influential movements.
For example, Christianity has been responsible for great crimes such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, the oppression of native cultures across the world, and the disempowerment of women. A Christian might take offence at this and retort that all these crimes resulted from a complete misunderstanding of Christianity. Jesus preached only love, and the Inquisition was based on a horrific distortion of his teachings. We can sympathise with this claim, but it would be a mistake to let Christianity off the hook so easily. Christians appalled by the Inquisition and by the Crusades cannot just wash their hands of these atrocities – they should rather ask themselves some very tough questions. How exactly did their 'religion of love' allow itself to be distorted in such a way, ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Whatever sins Christians engaged in the past, and they were extensive, the fact is that the most humane and decent countries in the world nearly all have Christian origins. That is not true of states that grew out of Islam. ~ Dennis Prager

There are those who say we must rescind the Golan Heights law that was passed in the Knesset. To rescind is a concept from the days of the Inquisition. Our forefathers were burned at the stake and would not rescind their faith. ~ Menachem Begin

The investigation of consciousness has come to be regarded suspiciously by most smart people and by most scientists. That's a legacy that began with the Inquisition, which considered non-Christian spiritual inquiry as blasphemous. ~ David O. Russell

The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Clearly, this is an historic form of waterboarding, and, interestingly, the professional torturers of the Inquisition were not only happy to define it as a form of torture, but by the early 1600s had abandoned it in favour of methods they 'regarded as more merciful'.46 ~ Robert Goodwin

He knew what she knew – that the world they lived in most days was an illusion of safety, that the real world, without the smoke and mirrors of self-deception, was treacherous, dangerous, and deadly. - An Inquisition of Angels ~ Reneé Porter

It looked, at first sight, like a portable windmill that had been attacked by an enormous insect, and at second sight like a touring torture chamber for an Inquisition that wanted to get out and about a bit and enjoy the fresh air. ~ Terry Pratchett

When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register, which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury 'the modern Domesday Book.' ~ James Buchan

Abruptly, with the shock of the Conquest, the sober and puritanical man of the Christian Inquisition encountered, through their violent and upsetting nature, peoples who through their rituals were identified with the gods. ~ Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

various people at her church kept saying that she could be happy because she was going home to be with Jesus. This is the sort of thing that gives Christians a bad name. This, and the Inquisition. Sue wanted to open fire on them all. I think I encouraged this. ~ Anne Lamott

I was born on April 1, 1933, in Constantine, Algeria, which was then part of France. My family, originally from Tangier, settled in Tunisia and then in Algeria in the 16th century after having fled Spain during the Inquisition. ~ Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

How had it come about that these particular designs were chosen as our letters? Who decreed what sound would accompany each shape? And how was it decided the manner they would come together to form a word?
'Why is this so?' I demanded to know. ~ Theresa Breslin

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

Using the confirmation bias, these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed by nationalism, social science, and political theory under Stalinism or during the Vietnam War. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. ~ James Madison

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people. ~ Salman Rushdie

[Kendra] also referred to Tizoc Theron, one of the most powerful mercenaries in all of vampiric existence, as her "Tizzy". The Inquisition was "a dreadful inconvenience," World War II was "a little spat" and the fall of Midnight, the vampiric empire that had reigned for centurie, was "an unfortunate event. ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

The human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart.' Given what happened to her, it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that. ~ Steve Earle

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

Throughout all the pain of enslavement and despotism, of inquisition, forced conversion, and massacre, the Jewish people has carried in its heart the yearning for freedom and has given this craving a folk expression which includes every soul in Israel, every single downtrodden pauperized soul! ~ Berl Katznelson

Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Pro scienta atque sapienta-Latin- for science and wisdom
It's a Darwinian popularity contest. at all times, the question on everyone's mind is, "who's coolest?"
Do you want the Spanish Inquisition in here? you better start acting with a little sobriety, or your mother is going to put two and two together ~ Ned Vizzini

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

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