Pankaj Verma

“When power of true belief is alloyed with the power of the totalitarian state—a phenomenon that began in ancient Egypt under the pharaoh Akhenaton, reappeared in biblical Israel under King Josiah and reached its fullest expression in Rome under the Christian emperors—anyone and everyone who does not embrace the approved beliefs and practices, or does not embrace them with sufficient ardor, is at risk of death. The same rigorism and zeal that characterized the war of God against the gods can be found in all totalitarianism, and nowhere more terribly than in such modern and supposedly secular phenomena as Nazism and Communism.”
― Jonathan Kirsch, God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism