William Edward Hartpole Lecky Quotes

The Roman Church has never erred, nor can it err until the end of time.

In the hands of the clergy, politics and jurisprudence, as well as other sciences, remained branches of theology, and were treated according to the principles prevailing in the latter. The dogmas of the church were at the same time political axioms, and Bible quotations had the validity of law in every court. Even after the formation of a special class of jurists, jurisprudence long remained under the tutelage of theology

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.

Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth - each of the other.

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

I'm against organised religion of any kind.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches.

Organized religion preaches Order and Love but spawns Chaos and Fury. Why?

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most.

Religion claims to be in possession of an absolute truth; but its history is a history of errors and heresies.

Look through the whole histories of countries professing the Romish religion and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.

There is this difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England: the one professes to be infallible, the other to be never in the wrong.

Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses.

We know the clerical party; it is an old party. This it is which has found for the truth those two marvelous supporters, ignorance and error. This it is which forbids to science and genius the going beyond the Missal and which wishes to cloister thought in dogmas.

As to the matter of relics, it is almost incredible how impudently the world has been cheated. I can mention three relics of our Saviour's circumcision; likewise fourteen nails which are exhibited for the three by which he was fixed to the cross; three robes for that seamless one on which the soldiers cast lots; two inscriptions that were placed over the cross; three spears by which our Saviour's side was pierced, and about five sets of linen clothes which wrapped his body in the tomb. Besides, they show all the articles used at the institution of the Lord's supper, and an infinite number of similar impositions. There is no saint of any celebrity of whom two or three bodies are not in existence. I can name the place where a piece of pumice stone was long held in high veneration as the skull of Peter

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error… the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong.

I think that religious culture and the industry of religion pretty much deserves most of the heat that it gets.

But I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough - I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race.

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.