Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Cult

"The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Sectarianism is a perverse form of worldliness in the disguise of religion; it breeds a narrowness of heart in a greater measure than the cult of the world based upon material interest can ever do. For undisguised pursuit of self has its safety in openness, like filth exposed to the sun and air. But the self-magnification with its consequent lessening of God that goes on unchecked under the cover of sectarianism loses its chance of salvation because it defiles the very source of purity." -

"The danger of the cult of technological progress lies in its tendency to restrict and confine mankind within the adoring contemplation of his own creative power." - Jean Daniélou

"The cult of the hero is the absolutely necessary complement of the massification of society… The individual who is prevented by circumstances from becoming a real person, who can no longer express himself through personal thought or action, who finds his aspirations frustrated, projects onto the hero all he would wish to be. He lives vicariously and experiences the athletic or amorous or military exploits of the god with whom he lives in spiritual symbiosis." - Jacques Ellul

"The celebrity cult celebrates the triumph of ordinariness – charm without character, showmanship without ability, bodies without minds, information without wisdom." - Orrin E. Klapp, fully Orrin Edgar Klapp

"The religion of man… has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Most religions are absolutist. Claims to revelation militate against rational argument and compromise. In this sense all religions contain totalitarian possibilities; for totalitarianism, which welds the state into a single body “knit together as one man” is really the religious impulse, the worship of leadership and ideology, the cult of Person or Book, directed towards secular ends." - Malise Ruthven

"Religion is an explanation (Creed) of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live (Code and Community–structure) accordingly, which is based on the notion of the Transcendent (Cult). Because Religion is an explanation of the ultimate meaning of life it provides a code of behavior in the fullest possible sense, including all the psychological, social and cultural dimensions of human life, and is hence a “Way of Life” – for humans." - Leonard Swindler

"If our freedom means ease alone, if it means shirking the hard disciplines of learning, if it means evading the rigors and rewards of creative activity, if it means more expenditure on advertising than education, if it means in the schools the steady cult of the trivial and the mediocre, if it means - worst of all - indifference, or even contempt for all but athletic excellence, we may keep for a time the forms of free society, but its spirit will be dead." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"If our freedom means ease alone, if it means shirking the hard disciplines of learning, if it means evading the rigors and rewards of creative activity, if it means more expenditure on advertising than education, if it means in the schools the steady cult of the trivial and the mediocre, if it means - worst of all - indifference, or even contempt for all but athletic excellence, we may keep for a time the forms of free society, but its spirit will be dead." -

"If our freedom means ease alone, if it means shirking the hard disciplines of learning, if it means evading the rigors and rewards of creative activity, if it means more expenditure on advertising than education, if it means in the schools the steady cult of the trivial and the mediocre, if it means - worst of all - indifference, or even contempt for all but athletic excellence, we may keep for a time the forms of free society, but its spirit will be dead." -

"The Whole Truth is fathomless, ever free of containment, confinement, or conformity... No teacher, religion, or cult can hold exclusive possession of the Truth. The hallmark of Truth is its inclusive nature; no one or no thing could ever be excluded from It." - Alan Cohen

"The Whole Truth is fathomless, ever free of containment, confinement, or conformity... No teacher, religion, or cult can hold exclusive possession of the Truth. The hallmark of Truth is its inclusive nature; no one or no thing could ever be excluded from It." -

"The Whole Truth is fathomless, ever free of containment, confinement, or conformity... No teacher, religion, or cult can hold exclusive possession of the Truth. The hallmark of Truth is its inclusive nature; no one or no thing could ever be excluded from It." -

"Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of effort involved in getting there - or failing to get there." - Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner

"To seek life in truth, then, is to seek, in the cult of truth, to ennoble and elevate our spiritual life and not to convert truth, which is and always must be living, into a dogma, which is usually dead." -

"Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life." -

"The religion of the flag promptly replaced the cult of heaven, an old cloud which had already been deflated by the Reformation and reduced to a network of episcopal money boxes. In olden times the fanatical fashion was: 'Long live Jesus! Burn the heretics!' . . . But heretics, after all, were few and voluntary . . . Whereas today vast hordes of men are fired with aim and purpose by cries of ‘Hang the limp turnips! The juiceless lemons! The innocent readers! By the millions, eyes right!’ If anybody doesn’t want to fight or murder, grab ‘em, tear ‘em to pieces! Kill them in thirteen juicy ways. For a starter, to teach them how to live, rip their guts out of their bodies, their eyes out of their sockets, and the years out of their filthy slobbering lives!" - Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches

"But the value of religion exceeds the individual. Not only every man has its own religion but the religion requires its validity for larger community, for nation, race ... Since god reigns equally over all countries of the world, the whole world with all its treasures and horrors is subdued to him ... Therefore the cultivation (Pflege) of religion leads its confessors to an extensive bond and puts them before the task to acquaint (verständigen) themselves mutually about their belief and to give it a common expression. This is, however, attainable only by giving certain outer form to the contents of religion which fits by its illustrative power for this mutual acquaintance. Under the conditions of great diversity of nations and their living conditions it is only natural that those forms are largely different in indiviudal parts of the world and that therefore during the times a very great number of religions has appeared. All the religions have, however, a common natural assumption (nächstliegende Annahme), that god can be imagined as a person (Persönlichkeit), or at least as similar to man ... Every religion has its own mythology and its specific rite ... For formation of religious cult follow from this certain symbols which are suitable to influence imagination of wide circles of people (weiter Kreise im Volke), so that they awaken in them interests in religious questions and enabled them certain understanding of god. " - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

"To seek life in truth, then, is to seek, in the cult of truth, to ennoble and elevate our spiritual life and not to convert truth, which is and always must be living, into a dogma, which is usually dead." - Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo

"As much as we like to think that we are independent-minded, free-willed, autonomous individuals, the fact remains that some part of us is still susceptible to programming. Programming can happen to anyone. Intelligence, education, common sense, belief, or convictions offer little protection. All it takes is repetition (the slow route) or vulnerability (the fast route) and, eventually, we're hooked. Master programmers - from cult leaders to cigarette companies to government agencies - do both, as often as possible, whether you like it or not. Ironically, the more immune to programming you think you are, the more susceptible you become. " - Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams

"The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"There is no business like show business, Irving Berlin once proclaimed, and thirty years ago he may have been right, but not anymore. Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is." - Russell Baker. fully Russell Wayne Baker

"The sense of liberation from illusory difference" - Thomas Merton

"Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise." - Eugen Herrigel

"Like poor immigrants throughout the ages, Jews there adjusted to the jobs no one else would do." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto

"Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions; transparency is politics' management of mistrust." - Ivan Krastev