Quotes: Sect
"But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
(John Adams, 2nd US President (1797-1801) / 1735-1826)
"Imposition, n. The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on of hands --a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves."
(Ambrose Gwinett Bierce / 1842-1914 / The Devil's Dictionary)
"Eucharist, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled."
(Ambrose Gwinett Bierce / 1842-1914 / The Devil's Dictionary)
"Most of the sects and fundamentalist groups originate in protests against an organized religion, which they accuse of corruption, artificiality, over-complexity, hypocrisy."
(Mary Douglas, British anthropologist / born 1921)
"Difference of opinion is advantageous is religion. The several sects perform the office of a censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support rogeury and error all over the earth."
(Thomas Jefferson / 1743-1826 / Notes on the State of Virginia / 1781-1785)
"I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another."
(Thomas Jefferson / 1743-1826)
"There are no sects in geometry."
(Voltaire / 1694-1778 / Philosophical Dictionary, 1764)
"For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm."
(Voltaire / 1694-1778)
"Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror."
(Voltaire / 1694-1778)