Top 98 The Inquisition Quotes
#1. The Philippines is a terrible name, coming from Spain. Phillip II was the father of the inquisition, who I believe died of syphilis. It is my great regret that we didn't change the name of our country.
Imelda Marcos
#2. Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.
Frank Zappa
#3. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree.
James Madison
#4. The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.
Steven Pinker
#5. My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do.
Voltaire
#6. As already noted, "Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine.
Dave Hunt
#7. A prisoner in the Inquisition is never allowed to see the face of his accuser, or of the witnesses against him, but every method is taken by threats and tortures, to oblige him to accuse himself, and by that means corroborate their evidence.
John Foxe
#8. In the Middle Ages and beyond, the target was the Court Jew who had the ear of the ruler; during the Inquisition it was the Spanish Jews who thrived after their conversion to Christianity.
Jack Schwartz
#9. There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.
Salman Rushdie
#10. Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
#11. The horrors of the Inquisition are nothing compared to the fates your mind can imagine for your loved ones.
Stephen King
#12. When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.
Voltaire
#13. I remember the Inquisition, when pain in service to the church was raised to an art form.
James Rollins
#14. Whoever attempts to suppress liberty of conscience finishes some day by wishing for the Inquisition.
Jules Simon
#15. The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar
#16. The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.
George Orwell
#17. Fairest lady," said Candide, "when a man is in love, jealous, and whipped by the Inquisition, he no longer knows what he's doing.
Voltaire
#18. We condemn the Inquisition in the name of Christian values. After all, we can't condemn it in the name of the Mahabharata, which is comprised of a series of alternating murders, rather like the Iliad!
Rene Girard
#19. People were always asking for good sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast, even in countries where the Inquisition can read your very thoughts in your eyes.
Thornton Wilder
#20. In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.
Carl Sagan
#21. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.
Barack Obama
#22. If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#23. More people died on 9/11, in one day, at the hand of Muslim terrorists than during the Inquisition.
Robert Jeffress
#24. The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.
Harriet Ann Jacobs
#25. A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger.
John Foxe
#26. The Inquisition confused sin with sinners and judged both. Modern Americans make the same mistake but judge neither.
Peter Kreeft
#27. Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.
Anthony Hopkins
#28. the french ambassador to spain, meeting cervantes,congratulated him on the great success and reputation gained by his "don quixote"; whereupon the author whispered in his ear: "had it not been for the inquisition, i should have made my book much more entertaining.
Isaac D'Israeli
#29. various people at her church kept saying that she could be happy because she was going home to be with Jesus. This is the sort of thing that gives Christians a bad name. This, and the Inquisition. Sue wanted to open fire on them all. I think I encouraged this.
Anne Lamott
#30. If this is how science operates, by silencing those who express opposing views rather than by debating with them, then science is dead and we are in a new era of the Inquisition.
Graham Hancock
#31. The guy appeared to be on the verge of tears.
"Zere is no more bread," he confessed tragically, like someone admitting witchcraft to the Inquisition.
Karen Chance
#32. Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority.
Andrew Bernstein
#33. More men and women were slaughtered in a couple of weeks of the terror of the atheistic French Revolution than in a century of the Inquisition.
Michael Coren
#34. I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition!
Galileo Galilei
#35. Beautiful maiden," answered Candide, "when a man is in love, is jealous, and has been flogged by the Inquisition, he becomes lost to all reflection.
Voltaire
#36. The principle of the Inquisition was murderous ... The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
Lord Acton
#37. We are surrounded by the dry thorns of the Inquisition on all four sides; throwing around words burning like fire is the shortest way to one's grave!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#38. Clearly, this is an historic form of waterboarding, and, interestingly, the professional torturers of the Inquisition were not only happy to define it as a form of torture, but by the early 1600s had abandoned it in favour of methods they 'regarded as more merciful'.46
Robert Goodwin
#39. The investigation of consciousness has come to be regarded suspiciously by most smart people and by most scientists. That's a legacy that began with the Inquisition, which considered non-Christian spiritual inquiry as blasphemous.
David O. Russell
#40. There are those who say we must rescind the Golan Heights law that was passed in the Knesset. To rescind is a concept from the days of the Inquisition. Our forefathers were burned at the stake and would not rescind their faith.
Menachem Begin
#41. As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.
Voltaire
#42. Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.
Anthony Hopkins
#43. I feel like Galileo going before the Inquisition to explain that the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth. I hope I have more success.
Ken Livingstone
#44. The human race survived the Inquisition. We can survive. It's like the Anne Frank quote: 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart.' Given what happened to her, it's one of the miracles of the world that she said that.
Steve Earle
#45. I was born on April 1, 1933, in Constantine, Algeria, which was then part of France. My family, originally from Tangier, settled in Tunisia and then in Algeria in the 16th century after having fled Spain during the Inquisition.
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
#46. The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.
Sam Harris
#47. This is a theater," Bertie, annoyed by the inquisition, dropped him onto stage. Several feet of slack cable landed atop the fairy in a slithering heap.
"Oh!" Peaseblossom said. "You've buried him alive!
Lisa Mantchev
#48. The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory.
Thomas Jefferson
#49. Greed is empowered by knowledge, but we shouldn't be burning books or reject such knowledge, as what happened during the Inquisition and World War 2. We should instead share it and learn it.
Daniel Marques
#50. The important question to ask is why these bodies are allowed to exist. If a country such as Spain allowed a repressive body like the Inquisition to exist for four hundred years, it is not because the Inquisition forced itself on the Spanish nation. It is because the Spaniards allowed it to exist.
Cullen Murphy
#51. It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.
Willa Cather
#52. To be fair to the Inquisition, they only used confessions extracted after the torture had ended, which let them claim that admissions had been freely given; the fact that the torture would have started again if they hadn't confessed was a minor detail.
Simon Hoggart
#54. The opinions which are still persecuted strike the majority as so monstrous and immoral that the general principle of toleration cannot be held to apply to them. But this is exactly the same view as that which made possible the tortures of the Inquisition.
Bertrand Russell
#55. In 1487 alone, two hundred heretics had-in one of the greatest euphemisms in the history of language-"relaxed," that is, burned at the stake.
Dogs of God, Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors
James Reston Jr.
#56. If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
Thomas Hardy
#57. Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!
Marcel Leroux
#58. The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.
Tony Benn
#59. It is of interest to note that most secular humanists continue to belabor the horrors of the Inquisition in order to establish the moral depravity of Christianity.
Guenter Lewy
#60. Magic is a shortened term derived from "Magiano's tricks," coined from the exploits of the famous young charlatan, Magiano, who was never captured by the Inquisition. - Essays, by Raffaele Laurent Bessette Adelina
Marie Lu
#61. the friend neither sang of grief, nor open his heart to me
he muttled in his inquisition and wasted his life and his dreams
William Graham
#62. Throughout all the pain of enslavement and despotism, of inquisition, forced conversion, and massacre, the Jewish people has carried in its heart the yearning for freedom and has given this craving a folk expression which includes every soul in Israel, every single downtrodden pauperized soul!
Berl Katznelson
#63. Babies: more like the Spanish Inquisition than you think.
Cassandra Clare
#64. It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition, but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep's clothing.
Upton Sinclair
#65. Abruptly, with the shock of the Conquest, the sober and puritanical man of the Christian Inquisition encountered, through their violent and upsetting nature, peoples who through their rituals were identified with the gods.
Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio
#66. You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord's service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#67. Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical.
Oliver Ellsworth
#68. At the end of the sermon, all the faithful were to come forward and take an oath of allegiance to the Holy Inquisition.
Jeffrey Gorsky
#69. At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
Jean Cocteau
#70. It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans.
Laurence Sterne
#72. I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition.
Lynne Tillman
#73. I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division.
Edward Kennedy
#74. That's not what I asked," she said, a noticeable edge in her voice. "I asked why my father shot him."
He sighed. She could have found gainful employment with the Spanish Inquisition, he thought
ruefully; no chance of escape or evasion.
Diana Gabaldon
#75. When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register, which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury 'the modern Domesday Book.'
James Buchan
#77. How had it come about that these particular designs were chosen as our letters? Who decreed what sound would accompany each shape? And how was it decided the manner they would come together to form a word?
'Why is this so?' I demanded to know.
Theresa Breslin
#78. We cannot permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.
Calvin Coolidge
#79. I, ah, I wasn't expecting - " I said idiotically. Brianna gave me a grin to match her father's, eyes bright as stars and damp with happiness. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" "What?" said Jamie blankly.
Diana Gabaldon
#80. This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition.
Camille Paglia
#81. Her hair was pulled back so severely, it would have won approval from the Spanish Inquisition as a method of torture.
Will Thomas
#82. It looked, at first sight, like a portable windmill that had been attacked by an enormous insect, and at second sight like a touring torture chamber for an Inquisition that wanted to get out and about a bit and enjoy the fresh air.
Terry Pratchett
#83. The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.
Michel De Montaigne
#84. It was a perfectly normal gerbil. It appeared to be living in an exciting construction of cylinders, spheres and treadmills, such as the Spanish Inquisition would have devised if they'd had access to a plastics molding press.
Neil Gaiman
#85. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope! Um, I'll come in again ...
Graham Chapman
#86. It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.
Elie Wiesel
#87. Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.
Giordano Bruno
#88. Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
Alfred Whitney Griswold
#89. Tonight, history was going to be made. And it wasn't the discovery-of-radium, first-man-on-the-moon happy kind of history. It was the Spanish-Inquisition, here-comes-the-Hindenburg bad kind of history.
Eoin Colfer
#90. Believe me,' [ ... ] 'I would know about it. That's the difference between me and your girlfriend. I am the jealous type. I am the Spanish Inquisition when it comes to being fucked around on. No quarter will be given.
Jonathan Franzen
#91. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth.
Rose Schneiderman
#92. If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth]prevail over fanaticism.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. No one ever expects vaginal arthritis. (Or the Spanish Inquisition).
Jenny Lawson
#94. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition or something?" [Drew Nichols]
"Yeah, and you didn't expect it, did you? [John Bell]
Shawn Goodwin
#95. I believe that one day the world will judge the witch hunt against homosexuals just as harshly as it judges the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.
Mae West
#96. But, alas, nobody anticipated the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Richard Dawkins
#97. Spirituality can go hand-in-hand with ruthless single-mindedness when the individual is convinced his cause is just
Michela Wrong
#98. I bet you don't have to be Spanish to be the Spanish Inquisition," said Adam. "I bet it's like Scottish eggs or American hamburgers. It just has to look Spanish. We've just got to make it look Spanish. Then everyone would know it's the Spanish Inquisition.
Terry Pratchett
