Sect Quotes

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the eighteenth-century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organized, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth. It possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water. It doesn't seem to matter much which sect you have, for both types occur in all sects....”
― Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead

“...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.

[Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484]”
― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“5 mins after your birth, they decide your name, nationality, religion & sect & you spend rest of your life defending something you didn't choose.”
― Nilesh jain

“Quinn seemed to have become one of a jaded philosophical society, a group of arcane deviates. Their raison d'etre was a kind of mystical masochism, forcing initiates toward feats of occult daredevilry - "glimpsing the inferno with eyes of ice", to take from the notebook a phrase that was repeated often and seemed a sort of chant of power. As I suspected, hallucinogenic drugs were used by the sect, and there was no doubt that they believed themselves communing with strange metaphysical venues. Their chief aim, in true mystical fashion, was to transcend common reality in the search for higher states of being, but their stratagem was highly unorthodox, a strange detour along the usual path toward positive illumination. Instead, they maintained a kind of blasphemous fatalism, a doomed determinism which brought them face to face with realms of obscure horror. Perhaps it was this very obscurity that allowed them the excitement of their central purpose, which seemed to be a precarious flirting with personal apocalypse, the striving for horrific dominion over horror itself.

("The Dreaming In Nortown")”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory

“Sect and error are synonymous.”
― Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

“A sect, incidentally, is a religion with no political power.”
― Thomas Wolfe

“Cults tend to follow similar patterns. First, there's financial exploitation where members hand over money and assets to increase the cult's power over them and make them dependent on it. Then the sexual exploitation begins. Finally, there's physical exploitation involving confinement, punishment, and isolation from family members. If the cult's leader has become delusional enough to think they have the God-like power of life and death over their followers, they may demand the ultimate sacrifice - mass suicide.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Nothing in my beliefs tells me to let my relationship with the divine interfere with romantic love, the friction of sects never getting in the way of the friction of sex.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft

“One of the characteristics of sects is that they judge all other believers to be lost. What they claim, in effect is, "Unless you agree with me on all issues that I define as essential, you cannot be saved.”
― Flavil R Yeakley Jr., Why They Left: Listening to Those Who Have Left Churches of Christ

“Sebenarnya membuat sekte sesat itu nggak susah kok. Loe tinggal menciptakan nama yang impresif untuk sekte loe tersebut, mereka-reka tuhan imajiner loe sendiri, menyusun ajaran sesuai kehendak loe, menulis doa-doa semau loe, dan tinggal loe sebarin deh, supaya bisa mendapatkan sekelompok orang yang cukup bodoh untuk bergabung ke dalam ajaran loe itu.”
― Adham T. Fusama, Dead Smokers Club Part 1

“Oh, loe nggak perlu cemas. Meski para siswa di sini tidak begitu agamis, malah banyak yang terancam agnostik, tapi tak ada seorang pun yang terlalu kafir untuk beriman kepada Lucha Grande. Lagipula, siapa sih yang mau memiliki tuhan berwujud pegulat Meksiko?”
― Adham T. Fusama, Dead Smokers Club Part 1

“Yah, loe nggak perlu terlalu cemas. Selama iman loe masih kuat—atau paling tidak selama pikiran loe masih cukup waras—loe akan aman dari jeratan Lunarchist.”
― Adham T. Fusama, Dead Smokers Club Part 1

“Rich, poor, high, low -- the one thing common in all human beings is misery. The real cause of their misery is that they have lost touch with their inner self. But if you want to become a leader of a group of human beings, tell them that the other group is the cause of their misery.”
― Shunya

“Democracy basically means: Government by the people, of the people, for the people.... but the people are retarded.”
― Osho, آفتاب در سایه