{"quotes":[{"text":"Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term.","author":"Carl R. Trueman","tags":["bad-writing","heresy","theology"],"id":11934,"author_id":"Carl+R.+Trueman"},{"text":"The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt—the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.","author":"Gore Vidal","tags":["1962","christianity","evils-of-hatred","heresy","holy-war","hypocrisy","priscus","worship"],"id":19886,"author_id":"Gore+Vidal"},{"text":"The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? Murder those who were murder'd because of him? Turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? Steal the labor of others to support him? Bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? Covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.","author":"William Blake","tags":["amusing","heresy","iconoclasm","intuitive-ethics","religion","sophistry"],"id":27330,"author_id":"William+Blake"},{"text":"All right, so you believe in Santa Claus, and I'll believe in the 'Great Pumpkin.' The way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe just so you're sincere! (Linus).","author":"Charles M. Schulz","tags":["heresy","la-la-land","naivete","religion"],"id":34851,"author_id":"Charles+M.+Schulz"},{"text":"I say that many of these heresies, independently of the doctrines they assert, encounter success among the simple because they suggest to such people the possibility of a different life. I say that very often the simple do not know much about doctrine. I say that often hordes of simple people have confused Catharist preaching with that of the Patarines, and these together with that of the Spirituals. The life of the simple, Abo, is not illuminated by learning and by the lively sense of distinctions that makes us wise. And it is haunted by illness and poverty, tongue-tied by ignorance. Joining a heretical group, for many of them, is often only another way of shouting their own despair. You may burn a cardinal’s house because you want to perfect the life of the clergy, but also because you believe that the hell he preaches does not exist.","author":"Umberto Eco","tags":["christianity","heresy"],"id":37201,"author_id":"Umberto+Eco"},{"text":"Sin, blasphemy, heresy – all these are primitive ideas created by primitive creatures, unworthy of the title “human”.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["blasphemy","free-thinking","heresy","human-mind","human-nature","humanity","primitive-human-behavior","primitive-human-nature","rational-thinking","sin","social-psychology","wisdom"],"id":44688,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to years, ages). But someone must see this already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of human thought.","author":"Yevgeny Zamyatin","tags":["heresy","revolution"],"id":56159,"author_id":"Yevgeny+Zamyatin"},{"text":"It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself my mistake.","author":"S.J. Parris","tags":["guilt","heresy","lawyers"],"id":58170,"author_id":"S.J.+Parris"},{"text":"Nobody wanted to hear about all the Preterite, the many God passes over when he chooses a few for salvation. William argued holiness for these 'second Sheep,' without whom there'd be no elect. You can bet the Elect in Boston were pissed off about that. And it got worse. William felt that what Jesus was for the elect, Judas Iscariot was for the Preterite. Everything in the Creation has its equal and opposite counterpart. How can Jesus be an exception? Could we feel for him anything but horror in the face of the unnatural, the extracreational? Well, if he is the son of man, and if what we feel is not horror but love, then we have to love Judas too. Right? How William avoided being burned for heresy, nobody knows.","author":"Thomas Pynchon","tags":["heresy","jesus","judas-iscariot","preterite"],"id":58344,"author_id":"Thomas+Pynchon"},{"text":"If the Pentateuch is inspired, the civilization of of our day is a mistake and crime. There should be no political liberty. Heresy should be trodden out beneath the bigot's brutal feet. Husbands should divorce their wives at will, and make the mothers of their children houseless and weeping wanderers. Polygamy ought to be practiced; women should become slaves; we should buy the sons and daughters of the heathen and make them bondmen and bondwomen forever. We should sell our own flesh and blood, and have the right to kill our slaves. Men and women should be stoned to death for laboring on the seventh day. 'Mediums,' such as have familiar spirits, should be burned with fire. Every vestige of mental liberty should be destroyed, and reason's holy torch extinguished in the martyr's blood.","author":"Robert G. Ingersoll","tags":["bible","bigot","brutal","burning","christianity","civilization","crime","death-penalty","divorce","forever","heathen","heresy","holy","husbands","inspired","judaism","kill","liberty","martyr","mental","mistake","mothers","murder","pentateuch","politics","polygamy","sabbath","sell","slaves","spirits","stoning","the-bible","torth","wander","weeping"],"id":64294,"author_id":"Robert+G.+Ingersoll"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":64,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}