Quotes About Zealotry

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

It seems that when any model becomes an Idol its advocates begin to act like priests and inquisitors.

Radical Muslims fly planes into buildings. Radical Christians kill abortion doctors. Radical Atheists write books.

Fanaticism is a monster that pretends to be the child of religion

Religious tolerance. No! Zero tolerance for any type of religion.

Fanatical religion driven to a certain point is almost as bad as none at all, but not quite.

It seemed there was always a close correlation between true believers and high body counts.

Religion turned some folks belligerent.

Fanatics are like debris following the course of the wind, they are swept around like sand, and convinced to believe in what they do not understand.

This is the God of the Crusaders and jihadists, of the inquisitors, misogynists, and homophobes. This is the God we talk about when we stand around a burning pyre, hurling stones and abuses at the heretics being grilled there.

Nothing can be more violent and merciless than a group of true believers, no matter what they choose to believe.

Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image.

The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted.

The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.

Nothing is quite so dangerous as a religious fanatic who thinks he's doing the Lord's will.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

Bigotry is the sacred disease.

Fanaticism is ... compensation for doubt

Some of Washington's religious style probably reflected an Enlightenment discomfort with religious dogma, but it also reflected his low-key personal style. He was sober and temperate in all things, distrusted zealotry, and would never have talked of hellfire or damnation. He would have shunned anything, such as communion, that might flaunt his religiosity. He never wanted to make a spectacle of his faith or trade on it as a politician.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

This state of 'no-mind' exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit.