Quotes About Zealotry

A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case.

Religion in its fanatic state may be a passion devoid of morality that will take any means to an end.

The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don't.

If there's one thing I can't abide it's fanatics of any kind, and religious ones are the worst of all.

We believed it was a Good vs Evil situation: that the WBC was right and everybody else was wrong, so there was no questioning. It was a very public war we were waging against the 'sinners.'

Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.

You see, it doesn't matter if they're wrong. From 9/11 to recent shootings here in the United States, there's nothing more dangerous than a true believer on his own crazy mission.

Take it from the former pastor: The true believers are the ones who'll burn you the worst.

We've all become god's madmen, all of us.

The careerists win everywhere, believe me! Hassan's fanaticism was a career to him. Killing was his corporate job. The apocalypse was how he planned to corner the market.

There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it." [As quoted in The New Yorker , April 25, 2011]

A fanatic is one who sticks to his guns whether they're loaded or not.

Mate, it ain't violence if it's religion.

Every time that zealots clash with the zany and Religion and Freedom take opposite positions across the trenches, the issue becomes larger than the individual.

If religion, she also liked to say, is the opiate of the masses, fundamentalism is the amphetamine.

The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it.

Sometimes lunatics are so driven, they can take the whole world into madness with them.

No one is as fanatical as a convert.

I have no relish for puritans either in religion or politics, who are pushing for principles to an extreme, and overturning everything that stands in the way of their own zealous career…. I always distrust the soundness of political councils that are accompanied by acrimonious and disparaging attacks upon any great class of our fellow citizens.

The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god's name.

These people are dangerous because they think they are doing this because a god wants them to do it. It means they don't have to think like humans

Religious fanatics are the worst. They're basically impossible to bargain with, they accept no outside opinion about anything, and they departed from reality well before you met them.