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What makes the decisive difference is not whether religion is persecuted or not, but whether religion is a pious name for conformity or a fighting name for non-conformity.

— Walter Kaufmann The Faith of a Heretic (1963)

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Religion

More quotes by Walter Kaufmann

The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.

The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.

The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium.

The Faith of a Heretic (1959)

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

paraphrasing Nietzsche, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future.

Time is an Artist (1978)

All Walter Kaufmann quotes →

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

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