204 Quotes About Orthodoxy

Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.

Heresy is the life of a mythology and orthodoxy is the death.

We do not need to make up supernatural stories to believe in the goodness of great characters - goodness and greatness do not require magical nonsense to survive in a society of civilized beings.

Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.

To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance)really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being.

I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.

One century's saint is the next century's heretic ... and one century's heretic is the next century's saint. It is as well to think long and calmly before affixing either name to any man.

If you seek relief, you will go to people and books that massage your ego, fondle your beliefs, glorify your wounds and strengthen your prejudices. If you seek the truth, you will walk on a burning path which will melt you drop by drop.

Continuous rains flooded a village. It seemed that everyone will drown. A priest lived in a hill temple nearby. He was getting pleasure in this destruction. He was gleefully wishing, 'May all the sinners die.' A cloud burst on the hill. He died. Villagers remained safe. Perhaps his wish came true.