QuoteProject
Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.
George Santayana
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote critiques the violent history of Christianity and its impact on human passion and society.

George Santayana reflects on the turbulent history of Christianity, suggesting that rather than liberating humanity from natural passions, it has instead intensified artificial desires and led to conflict. The quote implies that religious fervor can lead to violent outcomes and an entrapment in less fulfilling passions, which contrasts with the peaceful ideals that religion often espouses.

Themes

ChristianityViolenceHeresyHuman PassionsPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the historical impact of religion on society, this quote serves to illustrate the darker side of religious fervor.

More from George Santayana

It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
George SantayanaRead
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
George SantayanaRead
Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
George SantayanaRead
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
George SantayanaRead
The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
George SantayanaRead

Similar quotes

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.
Alfred Lord TennysonRead
If you should ask me where I've been all this time I have to say "Things happen." I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth, on the river ruined in its own duration: I know nothing save things the birds have lost, the sea I left behind, or my sister crying. Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock with day? Why the dark night swilling round in our mouths? And why the dead?
Pablo NerudaRead
'Warm in December, cold in June, you say?' _x000D_ _x000D_ I don't suppose the water's changed at all. _x000D_ _x000D_ You and I know enough to know it's warm _x000D_ _x000D_ Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. _x000D_ _x000D_ But all the fun's in how you say a thing.
Robert FrostRead
What is it that you contain? The Dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia. The expanding universe opening in your gut. Are your twenty-three feet of intestines loaded with stars?
Jeanette WintersonRead
The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough.
Saint PatrickRead
This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.
Swami VivekanandaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.