logo

Quotes About Theocracy

Other observers may reasonably use terms like "theocracy," "dominionism," "fundamentalism," or "Christian right." I use those terms where appropriate, but often prefer "Christian nationalism" in referring to the whole, because it both reflects the political character of the movement and because it makes clear its parallels between the American version and comparable political movements around the world and throughout history.
~ Katherine Stewart
Hitchens: Since we only have one life to live, I can help people make it free as best I can, and assist them in their real struggle for liberty, which in its most essential form, is the struggle against theocracy, which is the original form of dictatorship and the violation of human rights.
~ Keith Howard
In a secular democracy, a person is supposed to be punished only when he breaks the law; never because he is evil. That is, after all, what distinguishes a democracy from a theocracy.
~ Thomas Stephen Szasz
The Senussi programme is the welding, first of Moslem Africa, and later of the whole Moslem world, into the revived "Imamat" of Islam's early days; into a great theocracy, embracing all true believers—in other words, Pan-Islamism.
~ T. Lothrop Stoddard
Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
~ Christopher Hitchens
I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing.
~ Christopher Hitchens
One of the most celebrated victims of this theocratic policy was Shelley (1792-1811) who was expelled from University College, Oxford, for writing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.
~ Christopher Hitchens
All civilisation begins with a theocracy and ends with a democracy. This law of liberty succeeding unity is written in architecture.
~ Victor Hugo
The Puritans are conventionally considered more "moderate" than the Pilgrims. This is like calling al-Qaeda more moderate than ISIS. The Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans were no less mad... They forbade Church of England clergy from setting foot in their new American theocracy in Boston and Salem, hung Quakers, and passed a law to hang any Catholic priests who might dare show up.
~ Kurt Andersen
The Boer nation had become a theocracy, and would so remain. General
~ James A. Michener
Some reconstructionists argue that Christian clerics should be in charge of government, similar to Iran's theocracy, or rule by clerics.
~ Graham E. Fuller
Theocratic and military authorities share one thing: they have no sense of humour.
~ Bassem Youssef
nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own ground, to anything messianic. Therefore, the Kingdom of God is not the telos of the historical dynamic; it cannot be established as a goal. From the standpoint of history, it is not the goal but the terminus [ Ende ]. Therefore, the secular order cannot be built on the idea of the Divine Kingdom, and theocracy has no political but only a religious meaning.
~ WALTER BENJAMIN
Government itself, which is the most unnatural and necessary of social mechanisms, has usually required the support of piety and the priest, as clever heretics like Napoleon and Mussolini soon discovered; and hence "a tendency to theocracy is incidental to all constitutions.
~ Will Durant
One of the best characteristics of the Tibetan people is their complete tolerance of other creeds. Their monastic theocracy has never sought the conversion of infidels.
~ Heinrich Harrer
Maintenant qu'il n'y a plus et qu'il ne peut plus y avoir de Religion nationale exclusive, on doit tolérer toutes celles qui tolerent les autres, autant que leurs dogmes n'ont rien de contraire aux devoirs du Citoyen. Mais quiconque ose dire, hors de l'Eglise point de Salut, doit être chassé de l'Etat; à moins que l'Etat ne soit l'Eglise, et que le Prince ne soit le Pontife. Un tel dogme n'est bon que dans un Gouvernement Théocratique.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I have a lot of respect for aspects of Islam, but I would not choose to live in a theocratically organised Muslim society.
~ John Rhys-Davies
Today, many American Christians seem to mix up church and state. They believe the community of genuine believers in America is the people of God— both in heaven and on earth. But the nation of America isn't the people of God; we don't live in a theocracy. The sooner Christians realize this, the sooner the church can make a deeper impact as salt and light in society.
~ Paul Copan
The American Conversation is an argument, after all, and way worse than our fear of error or anarchy or Gomorrahl decadence is our fear of theocracy or autocracy or any ideology whose project is not to argue or persuade but to adjourn the whole debate sine die. It's this logic (and perhaps this alone) that keeps protofascism or royalism or Maoism or any sort of really dire extremism from achieving mainstream legitimacy in US politics
~ David Foster Wallace
You feel sometimes when you hear analysts and knowledgeable people talking about Iran that they fear so much about the survival of the regime, because deep down it's not a legitimate regime, it doesn't represent the will of the people, it's kind of morphed into kind of a military theocracy.
~ Hillary Clinton
Secularism will not work in Egypt any more than theocracy. What will work is governance that is guided by the Islamic values of the majority with protection of the minority rights.
~ Ahmed Zewail
The reader as a whole reflected, as Bingham intended, New England's long transition from seventeenth-century Calvinism to nineteenth-century evangelical, freewill doctrine, from Puritan theocracy to the Revolutionary era's separation of church and state.
~ David W. Blight
The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some super personal force the Race, the Party, History, the proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.
~ Unknown
high priests of a theocracy, deceive them and use them with no more compunction than they would feel after deceiving a hen to take her eggs or after using a hammer to drive a nail. To those who lack a conscience, there is no such thing as remorse.
~ Dean Koontz