The Temple and the Lodge Quotes

“There was, in the American War for Independence, no conclusive victory comparable to Waterloo, no ineluctable 'turning point' comparable to Gettysburg. It seems almost as if everyone simply got tired, became bored, lost interest, decided to pack up and go home ... In fact, Britain did not lose the war in North America for military reasons at all. The war was lost because of other, entirely different factors. It was a deeply unpopular war, much as the war fought in Vietnam by the United States two centuries later was to be. It was unpopular with the British public, with most of the British government, with virtually all the British personnel directly involved — soldiers, officers and commanders. Clinton and Cornwallis both fought under duress, and with extreme reluctance. Howe was even more adamant, repeatedly expressing his anger, his unhappiness and his frustration about the command with which he had been saddled. His brother, Admiral Howe, felt the same way. The colonists, he declared, were 'the most oppressed and distressed people on earth.”
― Michael Baigent, The Temple and the Lodge

“But it was not just Freemasonry in itself — not just the rites, rituals, traditions, opportunities and benefits of Freemasonry. It was also an ambience, a mentality, a hierarchy of attitudes and values for which Freemasonry provided a particularly effacious conduit. The Freemasonry of the age was a repository for an imaginatively stirring and potent idealism, which it was able, in a fashion uniquely its own, to disseminate. Most colonists did not actually read Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot or Rousseau, any more than most British soldiers did. Through the lodges, however, the currents of thought associated with such philosophies became universally accessible. It was largely through the lodges that 'ordinary' colonists learned of that lofty premise called 'the rights of man'. It was through the lodges that they learned the concept of the perfectibility of society. And the New World seemed to offer a species of blank slate, a species of laboratory in which social experiment was possible and the principles enshrined by Freemasonry could be applied in practice.”
― Michael Baigent, The Temple and the Lodge

“One is reminded of the origins of Christianity and the process whereby Pauline thought, originally a schism or heretical deviation from Jesus' own teachings, supplanted those teachings and became the new orthodoxy — while Nazarean thought, the original repository of the teachings, was labelled a form of heresy.”
― Michael Baigent, The Temple and the Lodge

“In light of such evidence as is now available, Nostradamus's 'prophecy' seems not to have been a 'prophecy' at all, but a species of blueprint for action, perhaps some sort of coded instruction or signal.”
― Michael Baigent, The Temple and the Lodge