Satan's Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Satan's. Here they are! All 100 of them:

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Mark Twain
Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)
Voltaire
Mad Girl's Love Song I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
Sylvia Plath
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.
Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
Consequently, if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all Satan's power comes from God and so that Satan is simply God's child, and that we are God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really.
Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1))
I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects)
Archer isn't hot anymore.... He tried to kill me, and his girlfriend is Satan.
Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hall (Hex Hall, #1))
Names?' the receptionist asked us. “Jesus,” Jamie answered. “Mary,” said Stella. “Satan,” I said as I walked past her and pushed open the door to Ira Ginsberg’s office.
Michelle Hodkin (The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3))
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
Stephen King (The Stand)
You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?
Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.
Tess Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club (Rizzoli & Isles, #6))
Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.
Mark Twain
Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
But, you're his son," I said, trying really hard to hate him. "You're the son of Satan. Literally." "And you are the stepdaughter of Denise Davidson." Wow. That was a bit harsh, but, "Okay, point taken.
Darynda Jones (First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson, #1))
Stupidity—The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.
Anton Szandor LaVey
Is he a good boy? (Cherise) No, Mom, he’s Satan incarnate. In fact, once it’s over, we’re going to get liquored up and tattooed, then find some cheap hos and have a good time with his trust fund. (Nick)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine." ~Heathcliff
Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
Unbelievable. Every girl at this college would cut her frickin’ arm off to help me out. But this one? Runs away like I just asked her to murder a cat so we could sacrifice it to Satan.
Elle Kennedy (The Deal (Off-Campus, #1))
She was a woman with red hair and green eyes— the traits which Satan supposedly relished most in mortal females.
Robert Shea (The Eye in the Pyramid (Illuminatus, #1))
Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the world. It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.
E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, (Gadfly Saga, #1))
A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.
Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)
Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong.
Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve. The best idea in that apple, though, is making jazz.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Timequake)
Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
Why should I not hate mine enemies―if I "love" them does that not place me at their mercy?
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
The real satanist is not quite so easily recognized as such
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
Mark Twain
We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
Get thee behind me, Satan!
P.C. Cast (Marked (House of Night, #1))
People often ask me where I stand politically. It's not that I disagree with Bush's economic policy or his foreign policy, it's that I believe he was a child of Satan sent here to destroy the planet Earth. Little to the left.
Bill Hicks
Why did you betray your own heart Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. ... You loved me - then what right had you to leave me? Because ... nothing God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave? [...] I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?
Emily Brontë
What is this?” he went on now, spearing an unfortunate object on a fork and raising it to eye level. “This… this… thing?” “A parsnip?” Jem suggested. “A parsnip planted in Satan’s own garden.” said Will. He glanced about. “I don’t suppose there’s a dog I could feed it to.” “There don’t seem to be any pets about,” Jem—who loved all animals, even the inglorious and ill-tempered Church—observed. “Probably all poisoned by parsnips,” said Will.
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
I thought people in small towns were supposed to be nice, not act like the son of Satan.
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Obsidian (Lux, #1))
Satan never wastes a fiery dart on an area covered in armor.
Beth Moore (Daniel Audio CD Set: Lives of Integrity, Words of Prophecy)
When a Satanist commits a wrong, he realizes that is it natural to make a mistake―and if he is truly sorry about what he has done, he will learn from it and take care not to do the same thing again. If he is not honestly sorry about what he has done, and knows he will do the same thing over and over, he has no business confessing and asking forgiveness in the first place.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
What the fuck, what the fucking, bloody devil-shit, what in the name of Satan's swollen cock was that?
K.J. Charles (The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies, #1))
He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.
Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon)
Blessed are the destroyers of false hope, for they are the true Messiahs - Cursed are the god-adorers, for they shall be shorn sheep!
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Satan can control you if you let outward things determine your security.
Joyce Meyer
But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.
Mikhail Bakunin
What would friendship entail? Well, on Wednesdays, we sacrifice a cat to Satan
Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1))
Satan has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness... and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.
William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist)
Romans 6 - Our flesh is the instrument that Satan works through. When we say no to the flesh, we say no to the devil.
Joyce Meyer
Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?
Arianna Huffington
Satan is so much more in earnest than we are--he buys up the opportunity while we are wondering how much it will cost.
Amy Carmichael
It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.
Khaled Hosseini (El caçador d'estels)
I guess Satan was the first superhero [...] In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality.
Joe Hill (Horns)
If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead.
Jess C. Scott (Rockstar (BDSM bromance))
The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.
Carl Sagan quoting Kenneth V. Lanning
I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache.
Fulton J. Sheen (Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary)
Hi," Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian…"Can you tell me where I could find the books on Satanism?" Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did not have to telephone Kami's parents.
Sarah Rees Brennan (Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy, #1))
The Mother of God. Good-looking. Well-dressed. A good person. Knows how to make the absolute best of a situation. And never uppity about any of it.
Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
Love is one of the most intense feelings felt by man; another is hate. Forcing yourself to feel indiscriminate love is very unnatural. If you try to love everyone you only lessen your feelings for those who deserve your love. Repressed hatred can lead to many physical and emotional aliments. By learning to release your hatred towards those who deserve it, you cleanse yourself of these malignant emotions and need not take your pent-up hatred out on your loved ones.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Satanism advocates practicing a modified form of the Golden Rule. Our interpretation of this rule is: "Do unto others as they do unto you"; because if you "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Once you lose someone it is never exactly the same person who comes back.
Sharon Olds (Satan Says (Pitt Poetry Series))
It is better to stay single and wait for the one that makes sense then to marry someone that makes absolutely no sense. The moment you settle is when the one person that makes all the sense in the world shows up and Satan sits back and enjoys your spiritual meltdown.
Shannon L. Alder
When you look at the past without God’s eyes, you subject yourself to deception. The past no longer exists and God doesn’t linger there. However, Satan will show you whatever you want to see and believe, so you will be trapped in an emotion that cannot communicate truth, beyond what you want to remember.
Shannon L. Alder
What nearly everybody in my life had misunderstood about Satanism was that it is not about ritual sacrifices, digging up graves and worshipping the devil. The devil doesn't exist. Satanism is about worshipping yourself, because you are responsible for your own good and evil.
Marilyn Manson
মিথ্যা হলো শয়তানের বিয়ের মন্ত্র। মিথ্যা বললেই শয়তানের বিয়ে হয়। বিয়ে হওয়া মানেই সন্তান-সন্ততি হওয়া। একটা মিথ্যার পর আরো অনেকগুলি মিথ্যা বলতে হয় এই কারণেই।পরের মিথ্যাগুলি শয়তানের সন্তান।
Humayun Ahmed (এই মেঘ, রৌদ্রছায়া)
You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Hey, wait," I said, pulling back, "you are the son of Satan. Maybe we need a safe word." His grin morphed into something wickedly charming. "Okay, how about, 'Oh, my god, it's so big.'" Laughter burst out of me before I could stop it. Not that it wasn't. "That would be a safe phrase, but okay." I thought about it, then said, "How about 'Is that all you've got?
Darynda Jones (Fifth Grave Past the Light (Charley Davidson, #5))
Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.
Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1))
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
Helen Keller (The Story of My Life)
The devil's happy when the critics run you off.
Criss Jami (Venus in Arms)
Mary’s supposed to be the opposite of Eve, but I bet she had childbirth pain just like everyone else.
Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
We Christian writers must paint evil with the blackest of brushes, not to sow fear, but to call out the monsters to be scattered by our light. If Satan cloaks himself as an angel of white, intent on deceiving the world, any attempt on our parts to minimize evil is only complicit with his strategy... Turn to the light; don’t fear the shadows it creates.
Ted Dekker (The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth)
Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
Not all possibilities are open to us. The world is finite; our hopes spill over its rim.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
The Bible is the story of two gardens: Eden and Gethsemane. In the first, Adam took a fall. In the second, Jesus took a stand. In the first, God sought Adam. In the second, Jesus sought God. In Eden, Adam hid from God. In Gethsemane, Jesus emerged from the tomb. In Eden, Satan led Adam to a tree that led to his death. From Gethsemane, Jesus went to a tree that led to our life.
Max Lucado
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire “The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy”—Ken Ammi
Charles Baudelaire
The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the centre - wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake...what Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they 'could be like Gods' - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters - invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come...the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn't just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They'd come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout "The Devil Made Me Do It" and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
Christianity may be good and Satanism evil. Under the Constitution, however, both are neutral. This is an important, but difficult, concept for many law enforcement officers to accept. They are paid to uphold the penal code, not the Ten Commandments … The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
The person who takes every opportunity to "pick on" others is often mistakenly called "sadistic". In reality, this person is a misdirected masochist who is working towards his own destruction. The reason a person viciously strikes out against you is because they are afraid of you or what you represent, or are resentful of your happiness. They are weak, insecure, and on extremely shaky ground when you throw your curse, and they make ideal human sacrifices.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it--an abstract and geometric love.
Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
Suppose neutral angels were able to talk, Yahweh and Lucifer – God and Satan, to use their popular titles – into settling out of court. What would be the terms of the compromise? Specifically, how would they divide the assets of their early kingdom? Would God be satisfied the loaves and fishes and itty-bitty thimbles of Communion wine, while Satan to have the red-eye gravy, eighteen-ounce New York Stakes, and buckets of chilled champagne? Would God really accept twice-a-month lovemaking for procreative purposes and give Satan the all night, no-holds-barred, nasty “can’t-get-enough-of-you” hot-as-hell-fucks? Think about it. Would Satan get New Orleans, Bangkok, and the French Riviera and God get Salt Lake City? Satan get ice hockey, God get horseshoes? God get bingo, Satan get stud poker? Satan get LSD; God, Prozac? God get Neil Simon; Satan Oscar Wilde?
Tom Robbins
Not entirely fair?" His voice became that of the inferno: a rushing, booming howl of icy evil that flew around the great cavern, as swift and cold as the Wendigo on skates. "I am Satan, also called Lucifer the Light Bearer..." Cabal winced. What was it about devils that they always had to give you their whole family history? "I was cast down from the presence of God himself into this dark, sulfurous pit and condemned to spend eternity here-" "Have you tried saying sorry?" interrupted Cabal. "No, I haven't! I was sent down for a sin of pride. It rather undermines my position if I say 'sorry'!
Jonathan L. Howard (Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (Johannes Cabal, #1))
Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured to Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?"!
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
The other exception to the rule regards dealings with masochists. A masochist derives pleasure from being hurt; so denying the masochist his pleasure through-pain hurts him just as much as actual physical pain hurts the non masochist. The story of the truly cruel sadist illustrates this point: The masochist says to the sadist, "beat me." To which the merciless sadist replies, "NO!" If a person wants to be hurt and enjoys suffering, then there is no reason not to indulge him in his wont.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Some religions actually go so far as to label anyone who belongs to a religious sect other than their own a heretic, even though the overall doctrines and impressions of godliness are nearly the same. For example: The Catholics believe the Protestants are doomed to Hell simply because they do not belong to the Catholic Church. In the same way, many splinter groups of the Christian faith, such as the evangelical or revivalist churches, believe the Catholics worship graven images. (Christ is depicted in the image that is most physiologically akin to the individual worshipping him, and yet the Christians criticize "heathens" for the worship of graven images.) And the Jews have always been given the Devil's name.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)