Heresy Quotes

“The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.”

“But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.”

“… A wonderful collection of truths, and almost all are inconvenient’.‘… Something here to offend everyone’.‘… Everything from burlesque to parody, and with a sprinkling of serious commentary to confound the believers’.In the interest of balance however, here are some quotes from reviews which might have been written by others less inclined to view Heresies favorably. Again, I have undertaken this task on their behalf:“…a random assortment of schoolboy jokes. Possibly enjoyable for those who like juvenile humour – assuming they find it funny at all.”“The attempts at serious commentary are laughable, while the so-called heretical viewpoints are the unfunny fancies of a feeble mind.”“… Betrays an underlying resentment – disguised as ‘heresy’ – of those of eminence and achievement in music’s historical record.”Hmm. Can they all be right?”

“Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.”

“Heresy would like to think of itself as 'invented Truth'. But of course, all Reason and Logic would agree that no man can ever create Truth; he can only discover it. If heresy were ever at all beneficial, God would use it really to bring one right back to Truth, as countless 'inventions' have brought men to discovery.”

“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”

“Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.”

“If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.”

“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.”