Skip to content

As medieval Christian man could only conceive of religion in terms of a trinity, so his modern descendant can only conceive of politics in terms of a theology or, as we now say, ideology, of left-wing and right-wing forces and factions.

— Bernard Lewis The Return of Islam (1976)

Another quote →

Topics

Christianity

More quotes by Bernard Lewis

The surest test of one's understanding of a text in another language is translating it into one's own.

The emergence of the new monarchies, in which one man could determine the politics and religion of the state, made assassination an effective as well as an acceptable weapon.

The overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.

In most Muslim countries Islam is still the ultimate criterion of group identity and loyalty. It is Islam which distinguishes between self and other, between insider and outsider, between brother and stranger.

[T]ruth is in its usual place, somewhere in the middle between the extremes.

The New Antisemitism (2006)

All Bernard Lewis quotes →

You may also like

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan (1923)

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum.

Havelock Ellis

Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.

Bertrand Russell Education and the Social Order (1932)

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law [this quote is referring to English Common Law].

Thomas Jefferson Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bernard Lewis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.