Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Erasmus satirizes religious hypocrisy by suggesting corrupt clergy produce many false saviors.
In plain terms
He jokes that corrupt monks and nuns make many AntiChrists already.
What can you take from it?
Corrupt institutions often create more harm than good.

Where it applies

  • religious criticism
  • institutional reform
  • moral debates

Putting it to work

  • critique leadership
  • demand accountability

Questions to consider

  • What makes a leader anti-ideal?
  • How do you spot hypocrisy?

Another view

Satire can obscure serious points if taken too lightly.

More from Desiderius Erasmus

  1. There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.

    Permalink to quote #16

  2. To know nothing is the happiest life

    Permalink to quote #18

  3. The rules of grammar are crabbed things to many persons... it is important early to instil a taste for the best things into the minds of children, and I cannot…

    Permalink to quote #15

Related quotes

  1. Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies - except, indeed…

    David HumeDavid Hume quote #4

  2. The Pope talks so much shit. The Pope was castigating the media for making gays look normal. YEAH, you're a real GOOD judge of normal, with your gold dress and…

    Margaret ChoMargaret Cho quote #4

  3. And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, 'If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it.' That is, 'After the devil himself, there is no wors…

    Martin LutherMartin Luther quote #21