Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels, including The Da Vinci Code, which has become one of the best selling novels of all time as well as the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars. Brown’s novels are published in 52 languages around the world with 200 million copies in print.
In 2005, Brown was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine, whose editors credited him with “keeping the publishing industry afloat; renewed interest in Leonardo da Vinci and early Christian history; spiking tourism to Paris and Rome; a growing membership in secret societies; the ire of Cardinals in Rome; eight books denying the claims of the novel and seven guides to read along with it; a flood of historical thrillers; and a major motion picture franchise.”
The son of a mathematics teacher and a church organist, Brown was raised on a prep school campus where he developed a fascination with the paradoxical interplay between science and religion. These themes eventually formed the backdrop for his books. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he later returned to teach English before focusing his attention full time to writing.
Brown is currently at work on a new book as well as the Columbia Pictures film version of his most recent novel.
“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”
“Cathedral terminology was like stage directions—totally counterintuitive.”
“The media is the right arm of anarchy.”
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
“I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress. ”
“the strange ideas we derive today will one day be our celebrated truths”
“By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”
“Faith does not protect you. Medicine and airbags... Those are the things that protect you. God does not protect you. Intelligence protects you. Enlightenment. Put your faith in something with tangible results. How long has it been since someone walked on water? Modern miracles belong to science.. Computers, vaccines, space stations... Even the devine miracle of creation. Matter from nothing... In a lab. Who needs God? No! Science is God!”
“Because most Christians want it both ways. They want to be able to proudly declare they are believers in the Bible and yet simply ignore those parts they find too difficult or too inconvenient to believe.”
“Man is simply playing by nature's rules,and art is man's attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator's hand”
“Mr. Langdon all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all gods will be proven to be false idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There are only a few questions left and they are the esoteric ones. Where do we come from What are we doing here? What is the meaning of life and the universe? ”
“Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.”
“TRUTH.""Maybe there is a universal truth embedded in everyone's soul. Maybe we all have the same story hiding inside, like a shared constant in our DNA. Maybe this collective TRUTH is responsible for the similarity in all of our stories.""Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, mabe we do so because those ideas are true...written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us...vibrating with our unconscious wisdom.Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called...re-membered...re-cognized...as that which is already inside us.”
“One does not need to have cancer to analyze its symptoms.”
“Fear cripples faster than any implement of war.”
“Our minds sometimes see what our hearts wish were true.”
“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
“Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith―acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that we have proof the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.”
“At this gathering [Council of Niceau in 324 AD] many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon ― the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus... until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.”
“Nothing in Christianity is original.”
“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”
“Sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light.”
“...the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means ‘hidden’ or ‘obscured.’ In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdoctrinal had to be kept hidden or ‘occult,’ and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything ‘occult’ as evil, and the prejudice survived. >”
“As you know, this little grain of sand has mass. A very small mass, but mass nonetheless."And because this grain of sand has mass, it therefore exerts gravity. Again, too small to feel, but there."Now," Katherine said, "if we take trilions of these sand grains and let them attract one another to form... say, the moon, then their combined gravtiy is enough to move entire ocreans and drag the tides back and forth across our planet.”
“Langdon turned to Sophie. "Who is that? What... happened?"Teabing hobbled over. "You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur made by Acme Orthopedic.”
“dan brown\The televangelist began quoting verses from the Bible describing hierarchy of angels, demons, and spirits that ruled in heaven and hell. "Protect your souls from evil forces!" He warned them. "Lift your hearts in prayer! God and his angels will hear you!" He's right, Mal'akh knew. But so will the demons.”
“In which year did a Harvard sculler last outrow an Oxford man at Henley?" Langdon had no idea, but he could imagine only one reason the question had been asked. "Surely such a travesty has never occurred.”
“La chiave," the raspy voice replied. "The password.”
“Time is a river, and books are boats.”
“Vittoria slipped off her robe. 'You've never been to bed with a yoga master, have you?”
“Seek the goodness, become the goodness.D”
“Oh, this faithless world! Someone must deliver them. You. If not you, who? You have been saved for a reason. Show them the old demons. Remind them of their fear. Apathy is death. Without darkness, there is no light. Without evil, there is no good. Make them choose. Dark or light. Where is the fear? Where are the heroes? If not now, when?”
“Coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. As someone who had spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events. The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.”
“Without Wax...”
“It seemed there was always a close correlation between true believers and high body counts.”
“Open your minds, my friends. We all fear what we do not understand.”
“The Pentacle - The ancients envisioned their world in two halves - masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and Yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced there was chaos.”
“Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.”
“Darkness feeds on apathy.”
“You can point to the alleged miracles of the Bible, or any other religious text, but they are nothing but old stories fabricated by man and then exaggerated over time.”
“Perception is transformed, and a new reality is born.”
“Semakin banyak manusia belajar, semakin banyak dia menyadari ketidaktahuannya.”
“For centuries the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination - a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand by while science presumed to harness the power of God himself! Proof, you say? Yes, proof of science's ignorance! What is wrong with the admission that something exists beyond our understanding? The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith!”
“Imagine how they would have mocked you if you proclaimed, 'Not only is the world a sphere, but there is an invisible, mystical force that holds everything to its surface'!”
“Is it not possible that we are still living in the Dark Ages, still mocking the suggestion of 'mystical' forces that we cannot see or comprehend.”
“Buddha had said:"Each of us is a God. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.”
“God, grant me strength to accept those things I cannot change.”
“What really matters is what you believe.”
“Forgiveness is God's greatest gift”
“Learning the truth has become my life's love.”