Quotes About Dogma

The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.

Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world.

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth.

For many centuries Christians also believed in the idea of reincarnation, and it wasn't until the Second Council of Constantinople in A.D. 553 that reincarnation was officially declared a heresy and mention of it was stricken from public texts. The powers that be didn't like the idea of people getting infinite chances to get it right, because then you wouldn't need the church to offer you salvation.

I think they abuse anyone who don't toe the line. And with religious folk, that line can be a murky mess. People ain't got limits when they sure God is behind 'em.

Cuanto más despersonalizado un grupo, menos reflexivo y más sordo y ciego, más granítico y más fanático. Hay algo religioso en todos ellos, heredan enemigos y veneraciones y creencias que jamás cuestiona nadie, esa es su fuerza.

But the institutional mind has only one mental operation: It abhors truth.

You know, I don't believe that religions are religions. No, I believe they are philosophies with some good ideas and some fuckin' weird ones.

I could not blame them, for I knew how strong a hold a creed, however ridiculous it may be, may gain upon an otherwise intelligent people.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

when men believed too strongly, it made them cruel.

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

Attention ! Ce sont les croyants béats comme vous, les naïfs, les dévoreurs d'écrits humanitaires, les calvinistes de l'idée, qui élèvent les guillotines.

What made Einstein special was his impertinence, his nonconformity, and his distaste for dogma. Einstein's genius reminds us that a society's competitive advantage comes not from teaching the multiplication or periodic tables but from nurturing rebels. Grinds have their place, but unruly geeks change the world. (Walter Issacson, Wired)

I know that from the days of Watergate... the notion of two sources on a story has become the popular dogma about how you confirm something. And there is a lot of truth to that, but there are all kinds of ways to check to the extent that you can, a story that you get.

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

I derided Christians as anti-intellectual bigots who were too weak to face the reality that there is no rhyme or reason to the world.

Bohemia isn't somewhere an artist runs to escape society. It's a place where like-minded artists gather to plot the downfall of dogma and ignorance.

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy.

Religion leaves no room for human complexity.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

Every profession has its traditions and its traditionalists. But the traditionalists in the pulpit are much more certain than the others that the Lord is on their side.