Literalism Quotes

By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law. (Ursula K. Le Guin)

It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green." "If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.

Cassandra Clare

If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood.

Cassandra Clare

When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)

Joseph Campbell

I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. Not me, not in this lifetime, no chance. Actually Existing Islam, which has all but deified its Prophet, a man who always fought passionately against such deification, which has supplanted a priest-free religion by a priest-ridden one, which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.

Salman Rushdie

The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it's a product of the scientific revolution.

Reza Aslan

Look, if you like the freedom to play violent video games, watch internet porn, and grow weed in your house without police using thermal energy to bust you, you owe a debt to Antonin Scalia. You also probably work on my staff. Whether you loved or hated his narrow literalism about a document written before machine guns and gay people were invented, Scalia was by all accounts a nice guy with a wicked sense of humor. People liked him. ... Good people do have bad ideas.

Samantha Bee

Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.

Malcolm Boyd

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

E. O. Wilson

If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it; in the same way that I'll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying.

Krzysztof Kieślowski