Anthony de Mello Quotes

Ignorance is the Mother not of Devotion, but of Heresy.

There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a world where everybody said, 'We don't know?' The fact is that you're surrounded -God and you don't see God, because you KNOW ABOUT God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know. The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable. All revelations, however divine, are never any more than a finger pointing at the moon. As we say in the East, 'When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger'.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

The problem is that perception is reality.

Belief in the absence of illusions is itself an illusion.

No one is served or benefitted by believing in false or faulty ideas.

Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves.

As Luke 24 shows, it's possible to read the Bible, study the Bible, and memorize large portions of the Bible, while missing the whole point of the Bible.

There is nothing that is more often clothed in an attractive garb than a false creed.

Idolatry is really not good for anyone. Not even the idols.

Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue.

What happens is that people who are very religious but who are not in touch with reality, cannot be spiritual.

You can latch onto theological ideas that are, in fact, not accurate, and refuse to let them go. I think we've seen this a few times in church history.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

Some extremists take elements of the sacred scriptures out of context.

The pride of life hath corrupted the judgment of others, and perverted them in the way of religion.

I think for such a long time people had this misconception of who I was and what I was about.

A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people.

For a little while, maybe I did fall for my own mythology.