Quotes & Sayings About Crusades

It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle. — P.G. Wodehouse

The modern mind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey ferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral method unpractical, when it has just called any practical method immoral. — G.K. Chesterton

The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs. — John Lothrop Motley

When the kingdom of God is manifested, it's obvious. It looks like Jesus. But America as a nation has clearly never looked remotely like Jesus. There was nothing distinctively Christlike about the way America was "discovered," conquered, or governed in the early years. To the contrary, the way this nation was "discovered," conquered, and governed was a rather typical, barbaric, violent, kingdom-of-the-world affair. The immoral barbarism displayed in the early (and subsequent) years of this country was, sadly, pretty typical by kingdom-of-the-world standards. The fact that it was largely done under the banner of Christ doesn't make it more Christian, any more than any other bloody conquest done in Jesus' name throughout history (such as the Crusades and the Inquisition) qualifies them as Christlike. — Gregory A. Boyd

In the mainstream of evangelicalism, where female senior pastors were often unwelcome, most leaders and laypeople had adopted the conservative Reformed view of gender and had forgotten (or never knew of) women's leadership in the moral crusades of the nineteenth century, or even their prominence as Bible teachers, relief workers, and missionaries prior to the 1930s. — Molly Worthen

Two diametrically opposed points of view concerning religion in the West are to bee seen among Muslims. Some consider all Westerners to be Christians, with the small Jewish minority being of course an exception, and often refer to Westerners as "those Christians" as if the West were of the Middle Ages when the Crusades were carried out and when Western civilization lived in what has been called the Age of Faith. Another group of Muslims hold the opposite view that all Westerners are materialists or agnostics and skeptics and in fact there is no religion among the Westerners. Now it is essential to insist that both of these views are false. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Now is as good a time as ever to revisit the history of the Crusades, or the sorry history of partition in Kashmir, or the woes of the Chechens and Kosovars. But the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about 'the West,' to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. — Christopher Hitchens

But I also saw a city still bruised and bleeding from years of crushing war. I saw souls darkened by loss and bitterness in the crusades. I saw faith destroyed after the brutality we'd endured in its name. — Julie Berry

Current Muslim memories and anger about the Crusades are a twentieth-century creation, prompted in part by 'post-World War I British and French imperialism and post-World War II creation of the state of Israel. — Rodney Stark

And then earlier than that there were the crusades. The crusades were totally fucked. Richard the Lionheart, who had the heart of a lion as well as his own. He ripped it out of the lion, and the lion was left with a bicycle pump and not much to do. — Eddie Izzard

And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. — Barack Obama

God called me many years ago to be an evangelist, and I have never regretted His leading. I love the crusades, meeting people from every country and culture all over the world. My life has been blessed by friends from every land, and challenges from every corner. — Billy Graham

One other thing this skinny Arab knew: the power of hating the Jew. He could quote from the Holy Book chapter and verse the perfidy of Jews. He could show the dagger of Israel stuck in the soul of Jerusalem where Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. And this son of Islam's most holy places could wrap it all up in a tidy little conspiracy, the Jews in New York controlling America, the Great Satan, launching their crusades against Muslims everywhere. See, we Muslims are nursed on the mother's milk of conspiracies. And unless you have a conspiracy to explain everything in one neat package, we simply won't believe you. — Ken Ballen

You [the employees] are involved in a crusade. — Herb Kelleher

There is, for instance, only one page at the beginning of Runciman's three-volume History of the Crusades describing how the participants decided to begin four hundred years of wars, and then several thousand pages devoted to the routes, battles and other events which make up the "history" of the Crusades. — Lloyd DeMause

Michael saw Northampton Castle being built by Normans and their labourers, while being pulled down in accordance with the will of Charles the Second fifteen hundred years thereafter. A few centuries of grass and ruins coexisted with the bubbling growth and fluctuations of the railway station. 1920s porters, speeded up into a silent comedy, pushed luggage-laden trolleys through a Saxon hunting party. Women in ridiculously tiny skirts superimposed themselves unwittingly on Roundhead puritans, briefly becoming composites with fishnet tights and pikestaffs. Horses' heads grew from the roofs of cars and all the while the castle was constructed and demolished, rising, falling, rising, falling, like a great grey lung of history that breathed crusades, saints, revolutions and electric trains. — Alan Moore

For me George Bush is just as scary, if not more. Because he doesn't look like a scary guy, because he's shaved and he has a tie on. But he's a real fanatic - a fanatic by definition is the one who says, if you are not with me, you are against me, and that's exactly the position he takes. The mullahs in my country, it's obvious. But a guy who says I am the president of the biggest secular democracy in the world and asks people to read the Bible and make crusades and says he's God's best friend - this guy is even more scary because you don't see it at the beginning. — Marjane Satrapi

I'm sorry."
"Don't worry, dear," the woman said brightly. "The day I encounter Sophia again, I'll grab the nearest heavy object and bludgeon her myself."
Arriane flung out a hand to help Luce up, pulling her so hard her feet shot off the ground. "Dee's an old friend. And a first-class party animal, might I add. Got the metabolism of a donkey. She almost brought the Crusades to a grinding halt the night she seduced Saladin."
"Oh, nonsense!" Dee said, flapping a hand dismissively.
"She's the best storyteller, too," Annabelle added. "Or she was before she dropped off the face of the earth. Where've you been hiding, woman?"
The woman drew a deep breath and her golden eyes dampened. "Actually, I fell in love."
"Oh, Dee!" Annabelle crooned, clasping the woman's hand. "How wonderful."
"Otto Z. Otto." The woman sniffed. "May he rest ... "
"Dr. Otto," Daniel said, stepping out of the doorway. "You knew Dr. Otto?"
"Backwards and forwards. — Lauren Kate

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about
working people, minorities, and children. — Thomas Sowell

If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades - one from the Muslim side, one from the Greek side and one from the Catholic side. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I knew maps of the sea floor, maps that depict weaknesses in the shield of the earth, charts painted on skin that contain the various routes of the Crusades. So — Michael Ondaatje

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. — Howard Fineman

The first two crusades brought the flower of European chivalry to Constantinople and restored that spiritual union between Eastern and Western Christendom that had been interrupted by the great schism of the Greek and Roman Churches. — Joseph Jacobs

Part of Sykes's motive was rooted in religiosity. A devout Catholic, he regarded a return of the ancient tribe of Israel to the Holy Land as a way to correct
a nearly two-thousand-year-old wrong. That view had taken on new passion and
urgency with the massacres of the Armenians. To Sykes, in that ongoing atrocity, the Ottoman Empire had proven it could never again be trusted to protect
its religious minority populations. At war's end, the Christian and Jewish Holy
Land of Palestine would be taken from it, and the failure of the Crusades made
right. — Scott Anderson

The very fears and guilts imposed by religious training are responsible for some of history's most brutal wars, crusades, pogroms, and persecutions, including five centuries of almost unimaginable terrorism under Europe's Inquisition and the unthinkably sadistic legal murder of nearly nine million women. History doesn't say much very good about God. — Barbara G. Walker

They did not suspect her for a moment. It did not occur to them that a woman could be dangerous. How foolish they were. Women could do most of the things men did. Who was left in charge when the men were fighting wars, or going on crusades? There were women carpenters, dyers, tanners, bakers and brewers. — Ken Follett

It seems clear that the Arab East still sees the West as a natural enemy. Against that enemy, any hostile action-be it political, military, or based on oil-is considered no more than legitimate vengeance. And there can be no doubt that the schism between these two worlds dates from the Crusades, deeply felt by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape — Amin Maalouf

All wars are crusades, or we're made to feel they are. That's just what's so wicked about them. We're made to feel - not think - and people can't think when they feel. — Margaret Ayer Barnes

Nor all your piety nor all your preaching, nor all your crusades nor all your threats can stop one girl from going on the turf, can stop one mugging, can keep one promising youth from becoming a drug addict, so long as the force that drives the owners of our civilization is away from those who own nothing at all. — Nelson Algren

From the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to American politics
the name of Jesus had been hijacked as an ally in all kinds of power struggles. Since the beginning of time, the ignorant had always screamed the loudest, herding the unsuspecting masses and forcing them to do their bidding. They defended their worldly desires by citing Scripture they did not understand. They celebrated their intolerance as proof of their convictions. Now, after all these years, mankind had finally managed to utterly erode everything that had once been so beautiful about Jesus. — Dan Brown

pilgrimages or crusades. Even a monk must — Ken Follett

The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

We have reason to believe that when, during the crusades, Europe at last began to establish hospitals, they were inspired by the Arabs of near East ... The first hospital in Paris, Les Quinze-vingt, was founded by Louis IX after his return from the crusade 1254-1260. — George Sarton

The name of this city much helpeth Jew and Gentile to see the state of peace, for this is called Jerusalem, and that in Canaan hath Christ destroyed: this name should clearly have taught bot h the Hebrews not to look and pray daily for to return to Canaan, and pseduo-catholics not to fight for special holiness there (658-9). — Richard Baxter

Any crusade requires optimism and the ambition to aim high — Paul Allen

Policies are judged by their consequences but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel. — Thomas Sowell

[A] common denominator in European wars going back to the Crusades
no matter who won or lost, the one fairly reliable constant was that Jews somewhere were going to suffer. — Scott Anderson

They are an American Delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologize for the crusades', said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage. — Douglas Murray

Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible. — Thomas Sowell

It's not a religion, it's a relationship!'
Without the religion, without the archaic and flawed holy texts, there wouldn't be anything for you to manufacture a 'relationship' with. Without the wars and forced conversions key to the religion's spread across the globe, it may have died out long ago like so many others have. If that were the case, you wouldn't know the characters of Jesus or God or Muhammad or any of the tales and myths associated with a particular faith. Religions concern themselves with preserving and worshiping these myths as realities, without regard to substantial evidence to the contrary. — David G. McAfee

Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions and human rights movements. — Yuval Noah Harari

Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority. — Andrew Bernstein

Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I should describe more fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses. The middle-class woman began to write. For if Pride and Prejudice matters, and Middlemarch and Villette and Wuthering Heights matter, then it matters far more than I can prove in an hour's discourse that women generally, and not merely the lonely aristocrat shut up in her country house among her folios and her flatterers, took to writing. — Virginia Woolf

A good journalistic organisation upholds four values: inform, reflect, crusade, connect. — Jane Eisner

Let it be said, Marcus thought dryly,that nothing cooled a man's ardor like the Crusades. — Julia Quinn

Under the chivalrous rules of warfare as practiced in Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades, enemy aristocrats displayed superficial, and often pompous, respect for one another while freely slaughtering common soldiers. Rather than kill their aristocratic enemy on the battlefield, they preferred to capture him as a hostage whom they could ransom back to his family or country. The Mongols did not share this code. To the contrary, they sought to kill all the aristocrats as quickly as possible in order to prevent future wars against them, and Genghis Khan never accepted enemy aristocrats into his army and rarely into his service in any capacity. — Jack Weatherford

Your final hour," he said aloud, picturing the thousands of Muslims slaughtered during the Crusades. "At midnight you will meet your God." Behind him, the woman stirred. The Hassassin turned. He considered letting her wake up. Seeing terror in a woman's eyes was his ultimate aphrodisiac — Anonymous

During the crusades all were religious mad, and now all are mad for want of it. — J. G. Stedman

You can't just do whatever you feel like." "You can't just do anything you want." "You have to learn self-restraint." "You're only interested in gratifying your desires." "You don't care about anything but your own pleasure." Can you hear the judgmentality in these admonitions? Can you see how they reproduce the mentality of domination that runs our civilization? Goodness comes through conquest. Health comes through conquering bacteria. Agriculture is improved by eliminating pests. Society is made safe by winning the war on crime. On my walk today, students accosted me, asking if I wanted to join the "fight" against pediatric cancer. There are so many fights, crusades, campaigns, so many calls to overcome the enemy by force. No wonder we apply the same strategy to ourselves. Thus it is that the inner devastation of the Western psyche matches exactly the outer devastation it has wreaked upon the planet. Wouldn't you like to be part of a different kind of revolution? — Charles Eisenstein

Until the Crusades Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and ... only then did it receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first Caliphs are mythical figures. — Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov

as an ideology involves much more than skin color, although skin color has been and continues to be a key component of racism in the United States. White supremacy can be traced to the colonizing ventures of the Christian Crusades in Muslim-controlled territories and to the Protestant colonization of Ireland. As — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Isn't it amazing that, historically, the "Prince of Peace" has most often been introduced to new cultures through extreme violence? European and American colonialists bring this disparity to light in a way that makes me wish that forced conversion didn't work so extraordinarily well. — David G. McAfee

He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways ... — Terry Pratchett

The building is rather like a medieval Castle and was established in the Sixth Century and soon afterwards, as the Moslem armies advanced Westwards from the Arabian Peninsula, somebody had the prescience to build a small Mosque in its courtyard to guard against it being burned or demolished. At the time of the Crusades it was the turn of the Monastery to protect the Mosque, and so it has been down the ages, each House of God extending its shelter to the other as opposing armies came and went. — Ahdaf Soueif

Even in the grimmest of enterprises there are tension breakers. At one point, the tabloid National Enquirer ran a story headlined "Bush and Saddam Are Cousins" and offered genealogical "proof" that not only was George Bush related to the queen of England, but "Hussein and President Bush share a common ancestry dating back at least to the crusades." This news prompted the President to circulate a memo to the national security team that said, "No decisions I make will be affected by my relationship with Saddam Hussein. The Queen and I would have it no other way. — Colin Powell

Nisbet could find much to disturb a traditional conservative even in the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan: "President Reagan's deepest soul is not Republican-conservative but New Deal-Second World War Democrat. Thus his well noted preference for citing FDR and Kennedy as noble precedents for his actions rather than Coolidge, Hoover, or even Eisenhower. The word 'revolution' springs lightly from his lips, for anything from tax reform to narcotics prosecution. Reagan's passion for crusades, moral and military, is scarcely American-conservative. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is characteristic of all movements and crusades that the psychopathic element rises to the top. — Robert M. Lindner

Christianity brought something new and revolutionary: freedom and unconditional dignity for each individual, regardless of his religion, culture or nationality. But the East and the West have parted ways since the Crusades. — Walter Kasper

We're on record. We're part of the crusade. We're not backing down. — Julian Fantino

The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed that they served in God's battalions. — Rodney Stark

When the British General, Allenby, victoriously entered Jerusalem in October 1917 he declared "today the Crusades have ended". — Anonymous

TO BE "THE SEWER OF CHRISTENDOM and drain all the discords out of it" was the primary function of the Crusades, — Barbara W. Tuchman

Many critics of the Crusades would seem to suppose that after the Muslims had overrun a major portion of Christendom, they should have been ignored or forgiven; suggestions have been made about turning the other cheek. This outlook is certainly unrealistic and probably insincere. Not only had the Byzantines lost most of their empire; the enemy was at their gates. And the loss of Spain, Sicily, and southern Italy, as well as a host of Mediterranean islands, was bitterly resented in Europe. Hence, as British historian Derek Lomax (1933-1992) explained, 'The popes, like most Christians, believed war against the Muslims to be justified partly because the latter had usurped by force lands which once belonged to Christians and partly because they abused the Christians over whom they ruled and such Christian lands as they could raid for slaves, plunder and the joys of destruction.' It was time to strike back. — Rodney Stark

By now the crusaders had christened the most powerful French catapult 'Mal Voisine', or 'Bad Neighbour', while nicknaming the Muslim stone-thrower that targeted it for conter-bombardment 'Mal Cousine', or 'Bad Relation'. — Thomas Asbridge

The whole history of the last thousands of years has been a history of religious persecutions and wars, pogroms, jihads, crusades. I find it all very regrettable, to say the least. — Steven Weinberg

What was distinctively Western was not slavery but the moral crusade to end slavery. — Dinesh D'Souza

This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades. - by Arab League Secretary General Abdul Rahman Azzam — Sol Stern

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it. — Hilaire Belloc

THE HISTORY OF THE middle ages presents no spectacle more imposing than the Crusades, in which are to be seen the nations of Asia and of Europe armed against each other, two religions contending for superiority, and disputing the empire of the world. — Jospeh Michaud

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam's golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate. — Richard Engel

In most cases, obviously, soldiers fought because a government drafted them and gave them a rifle. At every point too, we see the role of nationalistic sentiment, commercial rivalries, and simple greed. But can we ever separate out such motives from the religious? Was that not also true of the medieval crusades? — Philip Jenkins

In running over the pages of our history for seven hundred years, we shall scarcely find a single great event which has not promoted equality of condition. The Crusades and the English wars decimated the nobles and divided their possessions: the municipal corporations introduced democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle; the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post-office brought knowledge alike to the door of the cottage and to the gate of the palace; and Protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven. The discovery of America opened a thousand new paths to fortune, and led obscure adventurers to wealth and power. — Alexis De Tocqueville

When the church first began, it was a pacifistic movement known for its outspoken criticism of any form of bloodshed or violence. After Constantine legalized Christianity, 'just war' theory emerged, which meant that Christians could participate in wars if certain criteria were satisfied. By the year 1100, Christians were launching Crusades and telling the faithful that killing Muslims would secure them a spot in heaven! What happened? Somewhere along the way we forgot that Jesus intended the Sermon on the Mount to be an actual, concrete program for living. He wanted us to actually live it, not just admire it as a nice but unrealistic ideal. I mean, what would happen if Christians dedicated themselves to peacemaking with the same discipline and focus that armies do for war? What difference could it make? We have to revisit the early church's teachings about reconciliation, peacemaking, and the Sermon on the Mount and ask ourselves if we're living them out or tiptoeing around them. — Ian Morgan Cron

But today, the United States is a shell of what we were back then. Several administrations have stripped the military to the bone and what we have left is off fighting the unending 21st century version of the Crusades. — Michael Koogler

Mackay had a low opinion of all Crusades. The Children's Crusade struck him as only slightly more sordid than the ten Crusades for grown-ups. O'Hare read this handsome passage out loud: History in her solemn page informs us that the crusaders were but ignorant and savage men, that their motives were those of bigotry unmitigated, and that their pathway was one of blood and tears. Romance, on the other hand, dilates upon their piety and heroism, and portrays, in her most glowing and impassioned hues, their virtue and magnanimity, the imperishable honor they acquired for themselves, and the great services they rendered to Christianity. — Kurt Vonnegut

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I read in the newspaper that the Catholic Church finally decided that it had been theologically improper to try to convert the Jews. Whoops! Sorry for all those inquisitions, crusades, and autos-da-fe. Previous popes were wrong - infallible, perhaps, but wrong. — Alan Dershowitz

Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs. — Thomas B. Macaulay

She wouldn't look up at him, wouldn't take her hands from her eyes; she didn't want him to see her. So he wrapped his arms around her like armor, making a shelter for her to fall apart ... He surreptitiously rested his cheek against the top of her head. That rich hair was too silky and fine and warm, and her narrow pale part seemed ridiculously pale and vulnerable as a fontanelle. Here, it seemed to say, was proof that Thomasina de Ballesteros could be broken. Cracked like an egg. That she was human.
The rage he felt then toward the duke was almost euphoric. Almost holy.
This is how crusades are born, he thought. With this kind of certainty about right and wrong, good and evil, and the need to avenge. — Julie Anne Long

We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up. — Alfred Gough

Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meets, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours--and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty careful down here[.] — C.S. Lewis

The Crusades, waged intermittently from 1095 to 1291, but which continued in waves for centuries after that, were military campaigns sanctioned principally by the Roman Catholic Church to reclaim the Holy Land. American students barely learn about the Crusades, but they are essential to understanding the wars of the last decade. — Richard Engel

Rehearsels, actually." "Rehearsals?" "For the-" Oh,no. "-musicale." The Smythe-Smith musical.It finished off what the Crusades had begun.There wasn't a man alive who could maintain a romantic thought when faced with the memory-or the threat-of a Smythe-Smith musicale. — Julia Quinn

Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers', no Northern Ireland 'troubles', no 'honour killings', no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money ('God wants you to give till it hurts'). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. — Richard Dawkins

Every government, left or right, always engages in moral crusades. What else are they supposed to do? Especially when they make war; any war has to be a moral crusade. — Richard Rorty

The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom ... What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers. What we're talking about are core American values. — Rick Santorum

[The tension] between the Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, doesn't it? It's too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I don't think that anyone really knows quite what to do. — Mickey Rourke

Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless - until they aren't. — Amy Waldman

Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god. — John Ralston Saul

In secular societies, adherence to God's commands has become a matter of individual conscience, but this has put followers of traditional religions in a quandary. They believe God's blessings or curses are dictated by obedience to his commands, but they are no longer empowered to impose their religious convictions on the entire community. Instead they must pursue cultural crusades using channels in politics and popular culture to impress their values on the masses. — Skye Jethani

European institutions and the worldview of conquest and colonialism had formed several centuries before that. From the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, Europeans conducted the Crusades to conquer North Africa and the Middle East, leading to unprecedented wealth in the hands of a few. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

In the Crusades, getting the Holy Land back was the goal, and any means could be used to achieve it. World War II was a crusade. The firebombing of Tokyo by Doolittle and the carpet bombing in Germany, especially by the British, showed that. — Stanley Hauerwas

Men of God are not just born, they are formed — John Paul Warren

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history. — Molly Ivins

Every war is its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades. — Karl Shapiro

If there ever was a religious war full of terror, it was the crusades. But you can't blame Christianity because a few adventurers did this. That's my message. — Moustapha Akkad

We believe that the Greeks have been punished through [the Crusades] by the just judgement of God: these Greeks who have striven to rend the Seamless Robe of Jesus Christ ... Those who would not join Noah in his ark perished justly in the deluge; and these have justly suffered famine and hunger who would not receive as their shepherd the blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles. — Pope Innocent III

This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. — George W. Bush

It is a neglected but essential fact that we cannot appreciate the relationship between religion and violence unless we grasp the nature and meaning of the two partners in this relationship. Yet our understandings both of religion and of violence are inadequate. Further, we usually consider too few offspring of their troubled marriage: when we think of "religious violence," we tend to think only of holy war and (especially since September 11) religious terrorism. However, those are not the only types of religious violence. — Jack David Eller