Heretics

We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed

The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion

There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them

Every man in the street must hold a metaphysical system, and hold it firmly. The possibility is that he may have held it so firmly and so long as to have forgotten all about its existence.

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas

We say that the cure for the bigot is belief; we say that the cure for the idealist is ideas

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions