Charles Spurgeon Quotes

I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.

The story of the decadence of the cathedral as a moral power, a spiritual energizer in civilization, is the sad but inevitable story of dogmatism. It is the story of the struggle of free thought with bigotry, religion making common cause with the wrong side.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

The main threat to freedom comes from church ministers who depend upon fear and superstitions to gain and to keep power

The church knows that an educated man is an unbeliever. That is why there is a continual struggle on the part of the clergy to adulterate education with superstition. To maintain their untenable position they must keep the people shackled to a form of mental slavery.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and of civilization. It has kept mankind in chains.

If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?

There is social intimidation by the self-appointed brigades of the thought police… they exist in every society, whether they are of the religious, nationalistic or atheistic variety. Dogmatists, who are convinced that they know better, that only the way they think is acceptable and who would deprive others of their right to hear differing and discordant voices.. They try to achieve this by either silencing the author or scaring away the public.

Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Religion is just mind control.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

When something comes up that attacks people's beliefs, their first reaction tends to be fear.

In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

When you have a person in power who punishes people for speaking their mind, it's truly dangerous.

Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.