Fanaticism Quotes - page 6
In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. We may look in vain for any period since Constantine, in which the clergy, as a body, exerted themselves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent or abridge a particular war, with an energy at all comparable to that which they displayed in stimulating the fanaticism of the crusaders, in producing the atrocious massacre of the Albigenses, in embittering the religious contests that followed the Reformation.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.
Joseph Conrad
[Philistines] only devised the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and to be able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as the work of epigones. With the view of ensuring their own tranquility, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history. ... No, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of "nil admirari.” While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose ‘corner-stone is slavery.' But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence.
Thaddeus Stevens
The White race comprises about 8% of earth's population. Due to abusive taxation we have had to curtail family sizes and now we average far less than replacement. Meanwhile, our taxes are used to breed Colored families of a dozen and more children. As a result we are a comparatively old race. The relevant statistic to survival is the number of White women of childbearing age or younger. About 2% of earth's population is young White female. In addition our masters force us to accept immigration by millions of Coloreds each year into the once White countries. Finally, the propaganda promoting inter-racial mating, particularly between White women and Colored males, is unceasing. We must now speak with the eloquence of emergency and act with the fanaticism of desperation. We must finally realize that political, religious and economic systems can be destroyed, rebuilt or replaced, but the death of our race will be eternal. It is beyond just setting priorities. Survival is the only issue.
David Lane (white nationalist)
There had been little about our childhood that could be described as paradisiacal. Our alcoholic father was either brutal or sullenly withdrawn. Our mother retaliated with religious fanaticism. As she knelt before plaster images of saints, in the flicker of votive candles, her furious mutter was more like invective than prayer. Their manias kept my parents quite busy, and Elena and I were more or less left to raise ourselves.
Elena and I were united only in our unspoken determination to show nothing of what we felt about this embarrassment of a life that our parents had visited upon us. In this we succeeded. To the outside world we were simply quiet children, good at school, not very social, a little high-strung.
Michael Nava
It is indeed remarkable how contradictory are the assertions which the partizans of Mehemet Ali are driven to have recourse to; for while at one time and for one purpose they represent him as the great champion of Mahommedan feeling, at another time, and for another purpose, they extol him as the subduer of Mahommedan prejudice, and as a man who has had energy enough to coerce that religious fanaticism which rendered the Mahommedans so overbearing and intolerable to the Christians in all the transactions and intercourse of life.
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
[Y]ou must remember that these people, these Turks, are of the race of Genghiz and Tamerlane, that they belong to a religion, of which I would not say a word of disrespect, which has produced high civilisation and morality, but is capable of the most atrocious perversion and corruption of any religion on the face of the globe; and being Mahomedans and being Turks, with their fanaticism thoroughly aroused, they perpetrated these horrors at which Christendom has grown pale.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
In the Koran as in the Bible, politics is divinized, and human reason, crushed by the religious ascendancy, cannot insinuate its isolating and corrosive poison into the mechanisms of government, so that citizens are believers whose loyalty is exalted to faith, and obedience to enthusiasm and fanaticism.
Joseph de Maistre
These horrible affairs in France are the offspring of fanaticism. Yes, sir; if the reformation had taken place there, as well as here, religion and the clergy would have been respected, as they are here. Fanatics make atheists. If I cannot believe in God without believing that a wafer is God, my reason abjures the deity. I wish religion to exist: it is of infinite use to society, and I therefore wish it to be as rational as possible. A synod of the English church might order several objectionable tenets and expressions of our worship to be altered. I love those reformations that prevent revolutions, by keeping pace with the gradual progress of reason and knowledge.
Horace Walpole
The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim.
We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
If any of you have ever looked at your FBI file, you discover that intelligence agencies in general are extremely incompetent. That's one of the reasons why there are so many intelligence failures. They just never get anything straight, for all kinds of reasons. Part of it is because of the information they get. The information they get comes from ideological fanatics, typically, who always misunderstand things in their own crazy way. If you look at an FBI file, say, about yourself, where you know what the facts are, you'll see that the information has some kind of relation to the facts, you can figure out what they're talking about, but by the time it works its way through the ideological fanaticism of the intelligence agencies, there's always weird distortion.
Noam Chomsky
