“Without heresy there could have been no progress.”

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation — not from God — but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think or investigate in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Without heresy there could have been no progress." by Robert G. Ingersoll?
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Robert G. Ingersoll 439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899

Related quotes

Charles Baudelaire photo

“Progress, that great heresy of degenerates.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Le progrès, cette grande hérésie de la décrépitude.
XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," II http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Edgar_Poe_III._Notes_nouvelles_sur_Edgar_Poe_%28L%E2%80%99Art_romantique%29#II
L'art romantique (1869)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Thomas Paine From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Preface.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870)

John Wooden photo

“Although there is no progress without change, not all change is progress.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Abraham Pais photo

“Progress leads to confusion leads to progress and on and on without respite.”

Abraham Pais (1918–2000) American Physicist

Inward Bound : Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (1988) http://books.google.com/books?id=mREnwpAqz-YC, p. 4
Context: Progress leads to confusion leads to progress and on and on without respite. Every one of the many major advances … created sooner or later, more often sooner, new problems. These confusions, never twice the same, are not to be deplored. Rather, those who participate experience them as a privilege.

“Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different.”

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31
Context: How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside.  Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question. <!--
Much of the conflict in the minds and arguments of those about me was due to a basic conflict between religious doctrines based primarily upon faith, and Greek philosophy, which was an attempt to interpret experience by reason. Or so it seemed to me, a man with much to learn.

“There will be no development without education, no progress without culture.”

Alberto Assa (1909–1996) Colombian eductor and translator

No habrá desarrollo sin educación, ni progreso sin cultura.
Instituto Experimental del Atlántico "José Celestino Mutis" http://web.archive.org/web/20130421041951/http://www.colegio-iea.com/Glosas%20Experimentales_Nr1.pdf

Anthony de Mello photo

“People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Healing
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Source: Awareness: A de Mello Spirituality Conference in His Own Words

Barack Obama photo

“There is no change without risk, and no progress without sacrifice, and no freedom without solidarity.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)

Related topics