Quotes About Fanaticism

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is the monster.

Celui qui, entre vingt et trente ans, ne souscrit pas au fanatisme, à la fureur, et à la démence est un imbécile. On n'est libéral que par fatigue, démocrate par raison. Le malheur est le fait des jeunes. Ce sont eux qui promeuvent les doctrines d'intolérance et les mettent en pratique ; ce sont eux qui ont besoin de sang, de cris, de tumulte, et de barbarie.

The passion for prophesying then seizes everyone; skeptics and fanatics alike delight in the idea of disaster and give themselves up in concert to the pleasure of having foreseen and trumpeted it abroad. But it is especially the theoreticians of Reaction who exult (tragically, no doubt) over the reality or the imminence of the worst - of the worst that is their raison d'être.

Fanaticism is the death of conversation. We do not gossip with a candidate for martyrdom. What are we to say to someone who refuses to penetrate our reasons and who, the moment we do not bow to his, would rather die than yield? Give us dilettantes and sophists, who at least espouse all reasons...

A man who loves his god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

The worst crimes are committed out of enthusiasm, a morbid state responsible for almost all public and private disasters.

Ambition is a drug that turns it's addicts into potential madmen.

Faith that denies fact is fanaticism

History proves that those who seed extremist ideologies reap a bitter harvest.

He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph.

Lo importante no es tanto la moral de las masas, cuya actitud resulta irrelevante con tal de que sigan trabajando, sino la moral del propio Partido. Hasta del miembro más humilde se espera que sea competente, trabajador e incluso inteligente dentro de unos límites, pero también es necesario que sea un fanático crédulo e ignorante...

but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

Kill every dog, every cat, she said slowly. Kill every mouse, every bird. Kill every fish. Anyone objects, kill them too.

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

One of the things you hear about when studying the nature of fanaticism is that a lot of the time, people don't start as fanatics. They shift and evolve into that state. That's a process, a systematic process of losing your identity and sense of self.

It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man.

By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.

We're a crazy country about sports, but for the longest time, only followed our own sports.

Elle arrive enfin sur le trône, cette infâme religion, et c'est un empereur faible, cruel, ignorant et fanatique qui, l'enveloppant du bandeau royal, en souille ainsi les deux bouts de la terre.

You see, people may tell you that Nazi Germany was built on anti-Semitism, a somewhat overzealous leader and a nation of hate-fed bigots, but it would have all come to nothing had the Germans not loved one particular activity - to burn. The Germans loved to burn things. Shops, synagogues, Reichstags, houses, personal items, slain people and, of course, books.

It's possible to be flippant here, when Jihadists fly aircraft into buildings they shout God is Great, what do atheists shout when they do it?

Albert Einstein wrote from Berlin to the French writer and pacifist, Romain Rolland: 'When posterity recounts the achievements of Europe, shall we let men say that three centuries of painstaking cultural effort carried us no farther than from religious fanaticism to the insanity of nationalism? In both camps today even scholars behave as though eight months ago they suddenly lost their heads.' ***