Anthony Burgess Quotes

Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Orthodoxy is a corpse that doesn't know it's dead.

Every dogma must have its day.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.

I believe that dogma is often evil.

There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and, thereafter, no more books.

The contents of an ideology are not sacrosanct simply because they are couched in the cloak of a religion.

When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.

All things that have form eventually decay." -Orochimaru

There are always some people who are ready to embrace a doctrine, a notion, a dogma, and they miss the real teaching.

That's an interesting philosophical question. When your boner goes away, is that one gone... forever?

The human body is in constant change the minute we're born. It's in a constant state of decay. We're all like Ford Escorts, just falling apart.

After a while you learn that everything stops.

Everything comes out of nothingness and goes back into nothingness. Hence there is no need for attachment, because attachment will bring misery. Soon it will be gone. The flower that has blossomed in the morning, by the evening will be gone. Don't get attached; otherwise in the evening there will be misery. Then there will be tears, then you will miss the flower. Enjoy while it is. But remember, it has come out of nothing, and it will go back to nothing. And the same is true about everything, even about people.

Nothing is permanent.

Religions do not teach doubt.

Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow on another like the withered leaves of Autumn.

Fade, flowers, fade! Nature will have it so; 'tis but what we in our autumn do.

Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.

Time is that in which all things pass away.

Life is full of temporary situations, ultimately ending in a permanent solution.

Modernity is the most transient of qualities.