Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics

     John Calvin is usually credited with this, but that attribution is looking increasingly suspicious to me, having spent quite a bit of time in Past Masters' Calvin:  Works and Correspondence database ("of heretics" and "of heresy"), Google, the Hathi Trust Digital Library, the Calvini Opera Database, and elsewhere, searching on not just the English above, but also, where appropriate, on haereticorum, herétiques, castellum, propugnaculum, and forteresse (without having looked closely yet at praesidium, ambiguitas and ambiguïté, plus any further declensions, variants in the orthography of 16th century French, and/or synonyms), etc.
     Take haereticorum as it appears in the online version of the Calvini Opera Database mounted by Yale.  Searching that for haereticorum, plus (to allow for hyphenation) reticorum, ticorum, and corum, I got a total of 70 hits on the former, but saw nothing like "fortress of heretics."  Assuming that I didn't miss something, the closest I got was (I think) this, from the first chapter of the Commentary on John, at "and the Word was with God" (CO 47 =CR 75, col. 3):

And yet the ancient writers of the Church were excusable, when, finding that they could not in any other way maintain sound and pure doctrine in opposition to the perplexed and ambiguous phraseology of the heretics [(adversus flexiloquas haereticorum ambages)], they were compelled to invent some words, which after all had no other meaning than what is taught in the Scriptures.

According to the Oxford Latin dictionary, ambages is closely related, via ambigo (AMBI + AGO) and then ambiguus, to ambiguitas.
     As for the 190 relevant hits on heretiques (heretiques, retiques, and tiques, but not yet any (if any) alternative 16-century spellings (and herétiques with the acute accent returned nothing)), I saw, merely skimming the complete Context (KWIC) Report, again nothing like "fortress of heretics".
     Potential equivalents in English (a list in progress):  refuge; heresies (rather than heretics); etc.

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

Mill's actual words:

"Is it astonishing that great minds are not produced, in a country where the test of a great mind is, agreeing in the opinions of the small minds?"

     John Stuart Mill, "Civilization" (1836), in The collected works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 18, Essays on politics and society, part 1 (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,  1977), .  Editor's note:  "Dissertations and Discussions, I (2nd ed., 1867), 160-205, where the title is footnoted, 'London and Westminster Review, April 1836.' Reprinted from L&WR, III & XXV (April, 1836), 1-28 [(p. 12, col. 2 in the American edition)], where it is headed, 'Art. I. / Civilization,' and has right running title 'Civilization' and left running title 'Signs of the Times.' Signed 'A.' Original article identified in JSM’s bibliography as 'An article entitled "Civilization—Signs of the Times" in the London and Westminster Review for April, (No 5 and 48.)' (MacMinn, 47.)"
     I should add that, after finding this in vol. 18, I did not search vols. 19-33 (though very roughly similar ideas occur in vols. 6 and 10 when searched on great minds).
     The quotation occurs as in the headline in, for example, The ordeal of Mark Twain, by Van Wyck Brooks (1920), 148.

"Let death, the last enemy, be removed, and my flesh will be for ever my friend."

"Take away death, and the body is good. Let death, the last enemy, be removed, and my flesh will be for ever my friend. Nobody, after all, ever hated his own flesh."

"mortem tolle, et bonum est corpus. detrahatur mors nouissima inimica, et erit mihi in aeternum caro mea amica. nemo enim unquam carnem suam odio habuit."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 155.15, trans. Hill, WSA III/5, 93.  I was put onto this by Alban Massie, "Augustin, les manichéens et la manducation de la chair," Communio:  revue catholique internationale 43, no. 5 (septembre-octobre 2018):  80 (75-84).  Latin from the CAG as present in Past Masters.
     "You were already consoling yourself with the reflection, 'I would indeed like my body too to be in life; but because it can't be, at least let my spirit be, at least let my soul be.' Wait, though, don't worry. . . .  In this way you will be delivered from the body of this death (Rom 7:24), not by not having a body, or by having another one, but by not dying any more" (italics mine).

"it is not possible to get the blessing without the madness"

"It is fifteen years since H. G. Wells said Mind was at the End of its Tether—with a frightful queerness come into life:  there is no way out or around or through, he said; it is the end.  It is because I think mind is at the end of its tether that I would be silent.  It is because I think there is a way out—a way down and out— . . . —that I will speak.
     ". . . The alternative to mind is certainly madness.  Our greatest blessings, says Socrates in the Phaedrus, come to us by way of madness—provided, he adds, that the madness comes from the god.  Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness. . . .
     "And there is a way out—the blessed madness of the maenad and the baccant. . . .  It is possible to be mad and to be unblest; but it is not possible to get the blessing without the madness; it is not possible to get the illuminations without the derangement."

     Norman Oliver Brown, "Apocalypse:  the place of mystery in the life of the mind" (Columbia University, May 31, 1960), in Apocalypse and/or metamorphosis (Berkeley:  The University of California Press, 1991), 2 (1-7).    The reference is to John Senior, The way down and out: the occult in symbolist literature (Cornell University Press, [1959]).  "Sometimes—most times—I think that the way down and out leads out of the university, out of the academy.  But perhaps it is rather that we should recover the academy of earlier days—the Academy of Plato in Athens, the Academy of Ficino in Florence. . . ."
     My thanks to Dana R. Wright, who put me onto this passage by asking for help in tracking a James E. Loder, Jr. quotation of it to source.

"fools with tools are still fools"

"second, mysteries are unpublishable because only some can see them, not all.  Mysteries are intrinsically esoteric, and as such are an offense to democracy:  is not publicity a democratic principle?  Publication makes it republican—a thing of the people.  The pristine academies [of Plato and Ficino] were esoteric and aristocratic, self-consciously separate from the profanely vulgar.  Democratic resentment denies that there can be anything that can't be seen by everybody; in the democratic academy truth is subject to public verification; truth is what any fool can see.  This is what is meant by the so-called scientific method:  so-called science is the attempt to democratize knowledge—the attempt to substitute method for insight, mediocrity for genius, by getting a standard operating procedure.  The great equalizers dispensed by the scientific method are the tools, those analytical tools.  The miracle of genius is replaced by the standard mechanism.  But fools with tools are still fools. . . ."

     Norman Oliver Brown, "Apocalypse:  the place of mystery in the life of the mind" (Columbia University, May 31, 1960), in Apocalypse and/or metamorphosis (Berkeley:  The University of California Press, 1991), 3-4 (1-7).  Needless to say, I have my reservations about this wonderful essay.  There have been real geniuses in modern science, too (and in Brown's sense); nor is it "Either miracle or scripture" (6; indeed, "only the fool will take these [too] as mutually exclusive"); etc.  Still, I'm one of those "fools with tools" who needs to be taken down a notch or two from time to time.

"If everybody always lies to you"

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

     Hannah Arendt, "Hannah Arendt:  from an interview," The New York review of books 25, no. 16 (October 26, 1978):  18.  "Hannah Arendt made the comments that follow in 1974 during an interview with the French writer Roger Errera."  Could that actually be 1973?  (I haven't watched that yet.)

Gallows humor

      "When the attackers approached the house they were not sure whether Gunnar was at home, and wanted someone to go right up to the house to find out.  They sat down on the ground, while Thorgrim the Easterner climbed on to the roof.  Gunnar caught sight of a red tunic at the window.  He lunged out with his halberd and struck Thorgrim in the belly.  Thorgrim dropped his shield, lost his footing, and toppled down from the roof.  He strode over to where Gizur and the others were sitting.
     "Gizur looked up at him and asked, 'Is Gunnar at home [(Hvárt er Gunnar heima)]?'
     "'That's for you to find out,' replied Thorgrim.  'But I know that his halberd certainly is [(Vitið þér þat, en hitt vissa ek at atgeirr hans var heima)].'
     "And with that he fell dead."

     Njal's saga 77 (trans. Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (London:  Penguin Books, 1960), 169).  Original (which I know nothing about) from the critical edition upon which the above translation is based:  Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík : Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954), 187.