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. (Dan Brown, "Angels and Demons")
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. (Dan Brown, "The Da Vinci Code")
Knowledge is power, and the right knowledge lets man perform miraculous, almost godlike tasks. (Dan Brown, "The Lost Symbol")
Perceptions of the modern masons ranged from their being a group of harmless old men who liked to play dress-up... all the way to an underground cabal of power brokers who ran the world. the truth, no doubt, was somewhere in the middle. (Dan Brown, "The Lost Symbol")
The power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought. (Dan Brown, "The Lost Symbol")
Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power. (Dan Brown)