A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

Thomas Jefferson

Quote Topics

Error Hold Like Martyrdom Politics Reformers Religion Torches Up

Quote Author

Thomas Jefferson
American - President
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826

Martyrdom is evidence only of a man's honesty - it is no evidence that he is not mistaken. Men have suffered martyrdom for all sorts of opinions in politics and in religion; yet they could not therefore have all been in the right; although they could give no stronger evidence that they believed themselves in the right.

Lysander Spooner

I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing.

Nicholas Lemann

I think my politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.

Lily Tomlin

I do not want to end up with an American style of politics, with us going out there beating our chest about our faith. Politics and religion - it is not that they do not have a lot in common, but if [religion] ends up being used in the political process, I think that is a bit unhealthy.

Tony Blair

My politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.

Lily Tomlin

All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, - never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

Robert Green Ingersoll

This idea that once you get into politics you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.

Matt Gonzalez

This idea that once you get into politics... you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.

Matt Gonzalez

Science differs from politics or religion, in precisely this one discipline: we agree in advance to simply reject our own findings when they have been shown to be in error.

Robert Pollack

The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.

Octavio Paz

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.

Samuel Butler

Error held as truth has much the effect of truth. In politics and religion this fact upsets many confident predictions.

George Iles

In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.

Rollo May

The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics, and the introduction of politics into religion is the prostitution of true religion.

Lord Hailsham

Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither religion or politics... The things that will destroy us are: politics without principles, pleasures without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality.