Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the eighteenth-century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organized, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth. It possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water. It doesn't seem to matter much which sect you have, for both types occur in all sects....

~ Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead Age Of Reason Curse Fraud Hatred Justice Mercy Nature Questions Sect Truth Vital

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein Cult Danger Law Organized Religion Power Religion Sect Separation Of Church And State

...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.]

~ John Adams

John Adams Celts Chaldeans Clergy Greeks Hindu Hinduism Islam Knowledge Monopoly Muslim Persians Priesthood Priests Protestant Reformation Romans Science Vs Religion Sect Teutons

Nothing in my beliefs tells me to let my relationship with the divine interfere with romantic love, the friction of sects never getting in the way of the friction of sex.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Thomm Quackenbush Beliefs Divine Love Religion Romantic Sect Sex

...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and

~ John Adams

John Adams Celts Chaldeans Clergy Greeks Hindu Hinduism Islam Knowledge Monopoly Muslim Persians Priesthood Priests Protestant Reformation Romans Science Vs Religion Sect Teutons

5 mins after your birth, they decide your name, nationality, religion & sect & you spend rest of your life defending something you didn't choose.

~ Nilesh Jain

Nilesh Jain Birth Defense Life Names Nationalism Religion Sect