Quotes about Fanaticism

"You are never dedicated to something that you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."

Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.

The rigidity of one's religious beliefs diminishes with the presence of faith.  Fanatacism is a grasping for order in a mind without peace and without faith.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry. note: There is a well-authenticated anecdote of Cromwell. On a certain occasion, when his troops were about crossing a river to attack the enemy, he concluded an address, couched in the usual fanatic terms in use among them, with these words: "Put your trust in God; but mind to keep your powder dry!"

If you pick a truth and follow it blindly. It becomes a falsehood, and you a fanatic.

You desire a popular art? Begin by having a "people" whose minds are liberated, a people not crushed by misery and ceaseless toil, not brutalized by every superstition and every fanaticism, a people of itself, and victor in the fight that is being waged today.

Fanaticism is . . . overcompensation for doubt.

There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.

It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.

The French courage proceeds from vanity - the German from phlegm - the Turkish from fanaticism & opium - the Spanish from pride - the English from coolness - the Dutch from obstinacy - the Russian from insensibility - but the Italian from anger.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

A faith-holder puts himself below his faith and lets it guide his actions. The fanatic puts himself above it and uses it as an excuse for his actions.

Who can explain Joseph Smith? What are "revelations from God"? What is their test? Is it not beyond reason that a lad, born of poor parents, devoid of any save the commonest education, too poor to buy books, should have accomplished what he did in less than 40 years, unless there was some great reason for it? Let any one, even a literary genius, after 40 years of life, try to write a companion volume to the Book of Mormon, and then almost daily for a number of years give out "revelations" that internally harmonize one with another, at the same time formulate a system of doctrine for a church, introduce many new principles, resuscitate extinct priesthoods and formulate a system of Church government which has no superior upon earth . . . to deny such a man a wonderful power over the human heart and intellect is absurd. Only fanatical prejudice can ignore it. However he may be accounted for by the reasoning mind, Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet was one of the wonders of his time.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

'Knowledge, without common sense,' says Lee, is 'folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.' But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Unless man in the midst of all his modernism finds a middle ground upon which to adjust his differences, there can be no mutual progress, human liberty is sacrificed and talent and freewill suffer. Improvement of the standards of living of the whole people is paramount, if civilization is to escape world fanaticism.

Perhaps myself the first, at some expense of popularity, to unfold the true character of Jefferson, it is too late for me to become his apologist. Nor can I have any disposition to do it. I admit that his politics are tinctured with fanaticism, that he is too much in earnest in his democracy, that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principle measures of our past administration, that he is crafty & persevering in his objects, that he is not scrupulous about the means of success, nor very mindful of truth, and that he is a contemptible hypocrite.