Quotes / The Fundamentalist

Anime

"In the way all of you are still acting, you're going to Hell."

— Momoko Koigakubo, Ghost Stories

Comic Books

"I'm not a warrior. I'm not a soldier of any kind. It's only a short step from there to calling yourself a crusader, or something equally dubious. Too many powerful people make these silly declarations... then it's all 'holy war' and 'sacred destiny'. That's generally when the trouble starts."

— Superman, JLA/Hitman

Fan Works

"They say that there is no one who isn't salvageable. Repent, for we are all children of God and belong in his grace. You, however, are not. You are not children of God, descended from Adam, crafted from clay of the Mother Earth. You crawled your way out of the rotting flesh of the Titan, an undignified, heretical creature. No amount of repentance or prayer, or conversion to the faith will ever save your souls, if you ever had one to begin with. You were born evil, and you will die evil. You only exist to corrupt the hearts of good men. Your magic is a threat I will not tolerate. No, you witches can join the devils of Hell where you belong, and burn for eternity for the sin of being born."

—Emperor Belos, A Blight on Bonesborough

Film — Live-Action

"Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point: we see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example."

— John Doe, Se7en

"The Prophet has commanded us to rule the world. Where in all your land of Spain is the glory of Allah? When men speak of you, they speak of poets, music makers, doctors, scientists. Where are your warriors? You dare call yourselves Sons of the Prophet? You have become women! Burn your books. Make warriors of your poets. Let your doctors invent new poisons for our arrows. Let your scientists invent new war machines. And then, kill! Burn. Infidels live on your frontiers. Encourage them to kill each other. And when they are weak and torn I will sweep up from Africa and thus the empire of the one God, the true God Allah will spread. First, across Spain. Then, across Europe. Then, the whole world!"

— Ben Yusuf, El Cid

"He has been sent first to tempt you. But it's not too late. You must push him from you, expel him! Trample down the perversion of nature!"

— Esmeralda, Edward Scissorhands

"And I say to you, bear witness! Watch the news. Watch the news. AIDS! Floods! The blood of the innocent, spilled! And yet, there are those who doubt this is the wrath of God. Our filthy government condones sodomy, divorce, abortion! And yet, some still doubt this is the work of the Antichrist!"

— Church Leader, Kingsman: The Secret Service

"Just leave this church! You just leave this church like the infidel you are! Satan cannot save you now! You will eat your babies! You will drown in the blood of the Lord! He will not save you!"

— Church Blonde Woman, Kingsman: The Secret Service

"You Goddamn communist heathen, you had best sound off that you love the Virgin Mary, or I'm gonna stomp your guts out!"

— Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, Full Metal Jacket

"You filthy pig! You and that whore! You both belong in the snares of the devil!"

— Mrs. Tredoni, Alice, Sweet Alice

Catherine Spages: I don't know why I'm so worried. I just can't imagine where he could be.
Mrs. Tredoni: Maybe you are afraid that God will send St. Michael to take another of your loved ones. When St. Michael took my little girl, I only thought of how cruel God was.
Catherine: Mrs. Tredoni, I'm sorry. I never knew you had a little girl.
Mrs. Tredoni: God took her from me on the day of her first communion, don't you see? He waited until then to teach me that children pay for the sins of their parents. And then I was sent here to look after Father, not you!

— Alice, Sweet Alice

"And on the third day, God created the Remington bolt-action rifle, so that Man could fight the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals."

— Homeschooled Boy, Mean Girls

"We're Christians! We're not supposed to think!"

— Fanny Wype, Nudist Colony of the Dead

"This is a religious retreat, which has nothing to do with fun! Do you think Jesus was having fun when he was being nailed on the cross? Do you think Noah had fun when he watched all his neighbors drowning? Do you think Cecil B. DeMille had fun when he parted the Red Sea and sent his crew into golden overtime?"

— Miss Stucco, Nudist Colony of the Dead

"Your rights stop where Jesus says they do!"

— Miss Stucco, Nudist Colony of the Dead

Drew: Coffee.
Drugstore Owner: There's no coffee in Nilbog! It's the devil's drink!

— Troll 2

Literature

Burn down your life
Set fire to all your ties of home, family and love
Light the fires and allow it to spread to thy neighbor's homes as well
Leave and never return, seek the truth ever more
For God is great!

— Kabir

"They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God."

— Jesus, The Bible (New International Version), John 16:2

"There are some upon this earth of yours, who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

— Ghost of Christmas Present, A Christmas Carol

"You never know when the Moral Majority's going to go Ayatollah ape-shit."

— Able Team: Justice by Fire

"On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded their own opinions as Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that anyone who disagreed with them was immoral, outrageous, sinful, sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid, illogical, treasonable, actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and obscene. The two subjects were (of course) sex and religion."

— Maureen Johnson, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Live-Action TV

"I don't drink coffee, sir. I don't drink hot liquids of any kind. That's the devil's temperature."

— Kenneth, 30 Rock

Reba: Barbara Jean, you're not gonna get anybody to believe by hitting them with a Bible.
Barbara Jean: That's how my daddy did it.

— Reba

Old Ollie wasn't jolly, he was glum and he was proud;
Would be miserable as sin, only sinning's not allowed!

— Horrible Histories, "Charles II: King of Bling"

Music

Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It's good enough for me

— Traditional Protestant hymn

I see them on the corner
Big black bible in hand
Shouting at the people to hear the word of the Lord
And it's this:
"You're just a filthy sinner-man
You can't save yourself, but Jesus can
And then you too can be an angel with a sword
Smite the unrighteous, make Jesus your goal
Sell him your soul
Go throw your mind down the nearest hole"
And the Lord Christ-Jesus will save you from the devil and sin
The Lord Marx-Lenin will save you from the Chairman of the Board
The Lord Smack-Needle will save you from the pains of life
But who will come and save you from your Lord?

— "Trinity", Leslie Fish

It's not O.K. to be gay
It's not O.K. to be a homo
You weren't designed to be that way
God says that it's a big no-no
It's not O.K. to be gay
It's not O.K. to be a pervert
It's not in your DNA
What you need is to be converted

— "It's Not O.K. to be Gay", George Smock a.k.a. "Brother Jed"

Preacher on a corner
Calling it a crime
The ends don't justify the means anytime
I stood up on my van
I yelled "Excuse me, sir
Ain't nothin' wrong with this country
A few plastic explosives won't cure"

— "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good", Steve Taylor

"I fight where God tells me, I never ask why
I've bloodied the Devil with steel from on high
I kill without consequence, heed no man's law
I sift out the righteous like grain from the straw
I am judgment and heaven is nigh"

—Heather Dale, "Joan"

"Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having loved?
Tell me, enough of thinking everything that you've done is good
I really need to know
After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood
I'm so tired of America"

—Rufus Wainright, "Going to a Town"

Tabletop Games

Kasif: You're the master of the Pinnacle of the Eye of the Hunt. It was you who defeated the heretic cult worshipping bile-black stone at Port Calin. It was you who brought down the Anathema Bosk at the threshold of his ancient tomb. And it was you who murdered Sesus Beedita, a fellow monk whose only crime was to disagree with your interpretation of the Immaculate Texts!
Peleps Deled: That's where you're wrong, Kasif...
Kasif: LIAR! I saw you do it. Don't even try to pretend it was accidental.
Deled: I didn't mean about that... I mean you're wrong to think there's such a thing as an "interpretation" of the texts.

— Discussing theological issues in Manual of Exalted Power: The Dragon-Blooded

Video Games

"If you got trouble with your wife, don't tell it to me, tell it to the Executive Producer in the sky! He's gonna cancel your sitcom. You need to say to yourself: 'I'm a terrible person, and I should DIE.'"

— GTA Radio, "Heartland Values with Nurse Bob"

"Our minds are born festering with sin. Some are so blighted, they will never find redemption. The mind must be pulled up from the roots. My children are without blame, without fault — and without choice. For what is the value of will when the spirit is found wanting?"

— Elizabeth, "The Value of Choice" voxophone, BioShock Infinite

"Beware, you who seek first and final principles, for you are trampling the garden of an angry God and he awaits you just beyond the last theorem."

— Sister Miriam Godwinson, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

"Until further notice, this village shall be under the control of us, the Cathedral Knights. All entrances shall be sealed. No one may enter or exit the village. Understood? Anyone violating my order shall be deemed a minion of Darkness and... purified in the name of Lord Granas. Come my Knights of Granas. Take up your blades to cut down the Darkness. God's Light shall shine!"

— Selene, Grandia II

"Pride! Greed! Wrath! Envy! Lust! Gluttony, and Sloth! So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit!"

— Dogma, The Binding of Isaac: Repentance

"The Emperor's men must have hearts of iron, souls of cold steel, minds like machines. A soldier of Christ and the Empire should feel naught but hate for his foe, for any who stand against Russia stand against all that is good and pure. They insult both man and God; they serve only the Devil and his semitic offspring."

— Sergey Taboritsky, The New Order Last Days Of Europe

Web Original

"Separate yourself from vain and foolish friends who turn you to atheism, worldliness, competitive sports, and false religions."

— Daily Morality

evangelical:
1. Someone who despite all accepted scientific evidence does not believe in evolution.
2. Even stranger in the 21st century: Someone who believes that The Passion of the Christ is a better film than Life of Brian.

— Urban Dictionary

"Because so many of you have tried to escape, we hereby order all of you to go barefoot from this moment forward. You will kick off your Sunday shoes.

You will not cut loose or attempt to go footloose or we will chop off your limbs and set them on a fire. We have already placed Louise on her knees for beheading. Jack was tied to several Toyota trucks mounting heavy machine guns and we pulled him apart with a crack. You could say that he really went footloose, but this would be incorrect because it was his arms and entire legs that detached."

— Something Awful, "Boko Haram's Statement Upon Seizing Control of the Town from Footloose"

"In fact, Robertson strikes one as a slightly eccentric, utterly delusional and repugnantly evil version of the wizard Tim: 'Hurricane, in the name of Jesus I take authority over you and command you to change course. In the name of Jesus I command you to turn away from Virginia Beach now. You will turn south and then east and strike the wicked godless heathen land of Cuba instead. Amen.', chants Pat."

— The Encyclopedia of American Loons on Pat Robertson

"The Jesus is Savior website is essentially the same as the Internet Church for Christ if it were created by a furious schizophrenic. [...] The only unifying theme of the site seems to be contempt and a psychotic distrust of literally everything."

— Soren Bowie, Cracked

"It can be argued that cafeteria Christianity is not only commonplace, but actually required in order for the believer to remain a functional member of society, as opposed to fundamentalists like Jack Chick, who are obviously so paranoid and delirious that they cannot function in the real world."

— Rational Wiki

"Will our culture ever wake from this fever dream? Perhaps. But never underestimate the sheer venality of the human animal, who is always willing to project his own sins onto someone else so he can shed blood with a clean conscience.

The genius of the Fundamentalist movement was to take all that evil and sprinkle a few Bible quotes over it in order to make it more socially acceptable."

— Christopher Loring Knowles

"He said Baptists were the first Christians and that this is clearly explained in the Bible. His mother told him so. I asked where this was explained in the Bible. He glared at me and said, 'John the Baptist, duh!' and then walked away."

— James J. Krupa, "Defending Darwin"

Web Video

subject: take respinsibty

dorkins, the riots in london are all your fault. those godless men are all looting those poor god fearing heroes. do something to undone the damage. your all to blame. all money from selfish gene should go to fixing london. until you do something FUCK YOU

— Richard Dawkins reads his fan mail

Western Animation

"Have you ever sat down and read this thing? Technically, we're not allowed to go to the bathroom."

— Reverend Lovejoy, The Simpsons, "Secrets of a Successful Marriage"

"Finally! I can cleanse this perdition... MYSELF!"

— Emperor Belos preparing to destroy the entire Boiling Isles with their inhabitants, The Owl House, "Watching and Dreaming"

Real Life

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."

— G. K. Chesterton

"We cannot be iconoclasts, we cannot relinquish the old gods because so much has been sacrificed to them."

— Eva Figes

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."

— David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

"The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, 'Go and sin no more,' because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment."

— A.K. Chesterton, British fascist

"Take care what you are about, for unless you base all this on religion, you are only making so many clever devils."

— Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

"...the infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."

— Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

"It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism."

— H. L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

"No, Your Holiness. Not agnosticism, but Gnosticism is the danger for the Christian faith."

— Don Luigi Giussani (attributed) to John Paul II

"These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose."

— Gore Vidal (1992)

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."

— Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) (and as the mayhem wrought by Donald Trump and his followers shows, he was right)

"Dominionism is not inherently fascist, in that it does not inherently require the belief that there was a Christian theocracy that's been undermined, but it's certainly an ideology that can turn fascist without much difficulty — start from a premise about the spiritual degeneration of society, and you can probably come up with the fascist version of the narrative in your head."

— Dr. El Sandifer, "Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons"

"History has shown us that it's not religion that's the problem, but any system of thought that insists that one group of people are inviolably in the right, whereas the others are in the wrong and must somehow be punished."

— Rod Liddle

"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed'."

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

— Ann Coulter, on two separate occasions

"When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data."

— Henry Morris

"The Bible doesn't ask me to like what it says, only to obey it."

— John Russell "Rusty" Houser, domestic terrorist

"If one permits an infidel to continue in his role as a corrupter of the earth, the infidel's moral suffering will be all the worse. If one kills the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him."

— Ruhollah Khomeini, former Grand Ayatollah of Iran

"Every Muslim, the minute he can start differentiating, carries hate towards Americans, Jews, and Christians; this is part of our ideology."

— Osama bin Laden

"The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes."

— Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and subject of a fatwa by Khomeini

"...I think that the central problem of any religion is that the founders of religion are always extraordinarily intelligent people and what you notice as you get older is that extraordinarily intelligent people are not literal-minded and the great problem with religion is when what's been said by the founder of the religion which was supposed to be taken metaphorically is taken literally and that's where you get complete nonsense being made of what the founder of the religion said and indeed, people claiming, more or less, that the founder of the religion said the opposite of what they believe, except they haven't realized that."

— John Cleese, "John Cleese Considers Your Futile Comments"

"Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions... frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies."

— Matt Taibbi, on Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann

"A characteristic of religious fundamentalism is to perceive the world as an arena of continuous battle and to nourish it with anger and the desire for revenge."

— Ilter Turkemen

"You don't need freedom of speech if you let Jesus think for you."

— Anonymous Alumni from North Carolina

"To the Puritan all things are impure"

— D.H. Lawrence, Etrustcan Places

"The reality is that a lot of these folks — especially the adherents — are very militant in this belief that God has given them a mandate to rule over the nation."

— Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals, NPR, "More than half of Republicans support Christian nationalism, according to a new survey"

---