Blasphemy

Sourced

• Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
  • Ahab, in Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville

• For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll :Blasphemy Trial

• No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll :Blasphemy Trial

• It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll :Blasphemy Trial

• How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll :Blasphemy Trial

• Now, gentlemen, what is blasphemy? Of course nobody knows what it is, unless he takes into consideration where he is. What is blasphemy in one country would be a religious exhortation in another.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll :Blasphemy Trial

Unsourced

• Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.
  • George William Foote

• Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
  • Graham Greene

• To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place — not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world — and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women.
  • James Randi, challenging blasphemy laws in several US states

• He didn't utter a word, but he exuded mute blasphemy from every pore.
  • Mark Twain

Anonymous

• Blasphemy is a blast for me.
  • Bumper Sticker

• Let the gods avenge themselves.
  • Said to be a Roman law maxim on blasphemy, but there appears to be no published source for this. It was originally added here because it had been posted as a quote at Wordsmith.org