Octavia E. Butler Quotes

A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean!

What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

Anything done [in politics] is all right unless you get caught.

For his own sordid ends The pulpit he ascends

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.

Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends.

The biggest threats to faith aren't anything outside of it: they come bearing the name. It's why I find it especially important to call it out - also why I find it especially repulsive when people who crow the loudest about being Christians and use it as a money-making scheme utterly betray the faith when not on camera or in a crowd.

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites.

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.

[Middleton] contended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had admitted, eulogised, and habitually acted upon principles that were diametrically opposed, not simply to the aspirations of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most common honesty. He showed that they had applauded falsehood, that they had practised the most wholesale forgery, that they had habitually and grossly falsified history, that they had adopted to the fullest extent the system of pious frauds, and that they continually employed them to stimulate the devotion of the people.

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

I've never seen anybody that lied as much as Ted Cruz. And he goes around saying he's a Christian.

I detest the man who hides on thing in the depths of his heart and speaks forth another.

The worst thing about religion was religious people.

He that puts on a religious habit abroad to gain himself a great name among men, and at the same time lives like an atheist at home, shall at the last be uncovered by God and presented before all the world for a most outrageous hypocrite.

I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.

I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?

If you fake the funk, your nose will grow.