The Da Vinci Code Quotes 💬

Below, readers can explore a few of the iconic quotes from Dan Brown’s masterpiece that are in themselves deep and not only explain key details in the plot but can also be used to explain certain situations, even in life.

The Imbalance of History

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.

Here, Teabing was trying to explain to Sophie that just as the authenticity of the Sangreal documents cannot be proved, the Bible also cannot prove its authenticity. Since the Roman Catholic Church was the “winner”, it decided to assemble the Bible in a way that suited its motives.

 The idea of history as a story written by winners is the fundamental underpinning of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ Throughout the narrative, Brown details the ideas that Langdon and Teabing propose, which are that certain gospels were left out of the Bible because of the political desires of leaders; Mary Magdalene was of the royal blood of Benjamin, and more likely was Jesus’ wife rather than a prostitute; pagans were killed to further the political goals of the Church and that the meanings of certain words and symbols were changed to force people to change their beliefs.

Fanaticism

Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire

Teabing says this to explain the toxic nature of blind faith. He explains to Langdon and Sophie that even though the church did not fully grasp the content of the Sangreal Documents, they were willing to murder the priory members to obtain the supposed evidence out of fear that its exposure could destroy all it has built. He posits that fear is a greater motivation than desire.

In the same way, Teabing is describing himself. His fear that the priory would not release the Sangreal documents and expose the “lies” of the church leads him to commit heinous crimes that set the events of the story in motion.   

Pain is good

This quote is made three times throughout the entire novel, all by Silas. For him, physical pain is a constant reminder of Jesus’s suffering and of his own attempts to atone for his original sin—and by extension, all of humankind’s. That is why in the prologue, after he shoots Sauniere and sees him in physical pain, he says to him, “pain is good, Monsieur.” Silas has learned to equate pain with the joy of reverence, a mindset that Opus Dei encourages.

You’re wrong. You want it much more. You’ve proven you’re willing to kill for it.

This is said when Langdon makes a bluff about breaking the keystone, and Silas tries to call his bluff by saying that he (Langdon) also wants to find the Grail. With this statement, Langdon implies that Silas held onto his belief/duty so tightly that he was willing to go as far as even committing murder if it meant getting what he wanted.

Love and Sacrifice

Because, my dear, you are the reason the Priory failed to release the documents. Your grandfather’s love for you prevented him from challenging the Church

Here, Teabing reveals that the reason Sauniere decided to forgo his task and keep the Grail hidden is because of his love for Sophie. He knew that if the church could kill Sophie’s parents to send him a message, then they could also kill Sophie. So he decided to sacrifice his duty for the love of his family.

Sense of Duty

Shall the Church be allowed to cement its lies into our history books for all eternity? … No, something needed to be done!”

Teabing reveals his justification for the actions he’s taken to acquire the Grail. He is obsessed with destroying the Church’s lies, which will persist forever unless the truth of the Grail is revealed. He is the “saviour” who will do whatever needs to be done to free the divine feminine from the shadow of the Church.

Since the members of the Priory had decided to stray from the charge given to them, he decided that it was his duty to act and release the Sangreal and bring the church’s rule to an end.

Wincing in pain, he summoned all of his faculties and strength, the desperate task before him, he knew, would require every remaining second of his life.

This is during the final moments of Sauniere’s life after he was shot by Silas. He could have laid there and silently waited for miraculous help to arrive or used the last of his remaining strength to try to leave the Louvre, but his sense of duty was greater than the value of his own life. He knew he had to pass on the secret that only he knows, and he had to find a way to do it in such a way that only those who intended to know the secret would understand the clues he was going to leave behind.

Codes and Hidden Meanings

The connections may be invisible … but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface

This statement is by Langdon to say that coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. For him, due to his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined hidden codes, histories, and events.

He loved anything with multiple layers of meaning. Codes within codes

This statement is made when Sophie describes how her grandfather Sauniere loved hiding things within things, making him the master of double-entendres. This is what made him a true grandmaster of the priory and guardian of the secret because for the secret to having stayed hidden and safe all these centuries, it would have been hidden and would only be revealed after solving codes within codes. One would understand why Sauniere always made Sophie solve codes in order to receive her prizes, almost as if to subtly induct her into the “family business.”

Manipulation of the Church

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven

Here, Teabing was trying to explain to Sophie that the bible is another one-sided history written by the church to suit their purposes. According to him, the gospels of the bible were carefully selected, and out of over 80 possible accounts of Jesus’s life, only the four which most promoted the church values, and divine nature was chosen.

Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state

This statement shows that Christianity became popularized not through devotion, but by politics. According to Teabing, centuries after the death of Christ, the number of Christians had grown exponentially, and conflict broke out between the Christians and the Sol Invictus pagans. So Emperor Constantine had to make a decision. Predicting that Christianity has the prospect of amassing a much larger following, he decided to side with Christianity and took advantage of Christ’s substantial influence to unite the Roman empire.

In the battle between the pagan symbols and Christian symbols, the pagans lost

Langdon explains how nothing in Christianity is original. That is, how the early Christian Church appropriated pagan iconography into its own mythology and in the process, demonized the pagans as heretics and Satan worshippers. In a highly successful propaganda campaign, the Church not only swayed millions of people with its claims of a divine, male-centered theology, but it also buried all evidence of the role of women in Jesus’s life and ministry.

Belief

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

This quote summarizes the core of every religion. Everything we know about Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc. could be said to have been fabricated, just like folk tales, because the people who put their tenets together weren’t actually there to witness the events. That is where the concept of faith comes in.

Langdon made this statement to Sophie when he tried to explain that religion has helped a lot of believers find meaning in life, and even though he would love to witness the discourse that would be sparked by the Sangreal, the outcome of its release may have devastating outcomes. 

Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical

Here Langdon explains that the description of God in every religion is through metaphor and exaggeration, and only those who understand the message being passed would understand that Jesus did not literally walk on water and Buddha was not born from a lotus blossom. He says that people choose to believe these metaphors to be literal because it helps them cope with their realities.  

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