Sect
A sect is a group with distinctive religious, political or philosophical beliefs, often an offshoot of a larger religious group. Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and principles. The term is occasionally used in a malicious way to suggest the broken-off group follows a more negative path than the original. The historical usage of the term sect in Christendom has had pejorative connotations, referring to a group or movement with heretical beliefs or practices that deviate from those of groups considered orthodox.
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Famous quotes containing the word sect:
“Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.”
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)