Assumption Quote by Stephen Batchelor

Erotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles- the trappings of religion- confuse as much as they help.

— Stephen Batchelor

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables,…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

There is a powerful desire by majorities to assert a religious identity for the country.

— Jack Balkin

Abetted by misguided or co-opted intellectuals, the rulers weave a cloak of legitimacy to disguise their theft and hence to ease their extraction of…

— Robert Higgs

“The desire we so often hear expressed today for “episcopal figures,” “priestly men,” “authoritative personalities” springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We hunger for nobility: the rare words and acts that harmonize simplicity and truth.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence, and ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption; all of which facilitate the execution of…

— James Madison

“when the great intolerance of faith was lost, the secular robe of office had to supplant the sacred one, and society had to separate…

— Hermann Broch

The distinctions of personal merit and influence, so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and obscure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism…

— Edward Gibbon

Strong religious identities survive and thrive. But more than ever before, even in their most conservative iterations, they are chosen.

— Krista Tippett

In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.

— Charles Baudelaire

I believe that organized religion is an ornament to the truth, and that aesthetics are part of its power.

— Andrew Solomon