Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart. They have been true to their convictions, and, with a self-denial and fortitude excelled by none, have labored and suffered for the salvation of men. Imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, believing that by personal effort they could rescue at least a few souls from the infinite shadow of hell, they have cheerfully endured every hardship and scorned every danger. And yet, notwithstanding all this, they believed that honest error was a crime. They knew that the Bible so declared, and they believed that all unbelievers would be eternally lost. They believed that religion was of God, and all heresy of the devil. They killed heretics in defence of their own souls and the souls of their children. They killed them because, according to their idea, they were the enemies of God, and because the Bible teaches that the blood of the unbeliever is a most acceptable sacrifice to heaven.
“We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifty million.”
History of the Indies (1561)
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Bartolomé de las Casas 21
Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer 1474–1566Related quotes
“Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.”
Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien.
Act II, sc. iv
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670)
Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972
Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 113.
The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)
Context: Faced by the dire nihilism of our time, we need a greater honesty... The Western search for unifying truth did not come to an end with Christianity, any more than with the physical theories of forty years ago.
Quoted from an an interview with Glenna Syse in Time Magazine (New York, 15 August 1960); Times editors corrected Thurber's arithmetic
Letters and interviews
Did Adam have a Bellybutton?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2000)
page 97.
Father and Child Reunion (2001)