Annie Besant Quotes

I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

Every church is orthodox to itself; to others, erroneous or heretical.

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.

There are two ways to replace an orthodoxy: with openness or with another orthodoxy.

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different.

Orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof - of which history offers so many examples - that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs.

Any stigma will do to beat a dogma.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

In my opinion, there is one singular problem with religions in general: they are exclusive. To me, this exclusivity is not right.

Listen, a lot of religions have fundamentalists.

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

The second is the structure and source of cults. They have always haunted me, and I wanted to explore the fundamental notion of giving up responsibility to an outside power.

But I don't believe in organised politics, organised religion, organised music, organised anything.

There are a few people who are, let's say, personality-challenged, who would like to set up a cult, but in large part they fail due to the innate stroppiness and independence of their fellow pagans.

No religion can be built on force.

It is in the uncomprisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma that the danger lies.

There is no one orthodoxy which is the enemy of democracy. All of them are.