“Tiberius wanted to have Christ placed in the Pantheon and refused first of all to persecute Christians. Later on his attitude changed. Piso, Galba’s adopted son, probably belonged to a Christian family. How are we to explain the fact that men like Trajan and above all Marcus Aurelius should have so relentlessly persecuted the Christians? Yet Dante places Trajan in paradise… On the other hand Commodus and other villainous emperors rather favoured them. And in what circumstances did the Empire later on come to adopt Christianity as the official religion? And on what conditions? What degradation was the latter made to suffer by way of exchange? In what circumstances was accomplished that collusion between the Church of Christ and the Beast? For the Beast of the Apocalypse is, almost certainly, the Empire.
The Roman Empire was a totalitarian and grossly materialistic regime, founded upon the exclusive worship of the State, like Nazism. A thirst for spirituality was latent among the wretched ones subject to this regime. The Emperors realised from the very beginning how necessary it was to assuage it with some false mysticism, for fear that a true mysticism should arise and upset everything.”
Simone Weil
Letter to a Priest.
“Nearly everywhere – often even when dealing with purely technical problems – instead of thinking, one merely takes sides: for or against. Such a choice replaces the activity of the mind. This is an intellectual leprosy; it originated in the political world and then spread through the land, contaminating all forms of thinking.
This leprosy is killing us; it is doubtful whether it can be cured without first starting with the abolition of all political parties.”
Simone Weil
On the Abolition of All Political Parties.