Clarence Darrow Quotes

There are in America from fifteen to twenty million religious fundamentalists who are dedicated to doctrines incompatible with democracy in that they insist on their prerogatives as first principles. An even larger group feebly follows the trail of fire breathed by those fundamentalists. They are the most dangerous minority we have because they categorically eschew the reasoned judgments of the majority. Democracy properly allows them the right to worship as they choose. It should never have conceded them the right to establish schools. Education is not a function of any church—-or even of a city—-or a state; it is a function of all mankind.

[Spanish] unreasoning religious ardor culminated in the Inquisition, established for the purpose of securing the supreme good of unblemished purity and uniformity of belief. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of this, and no sacrifice was deemed too great for its accomplishment. All officials, from the king downward, were sworn to its support, and the sinister influence which it exercised was proportioned to the enormous power which it wielded.

[C]reationists [and] other religious enthusiasts [are], in many parts of the world ..., the most dangerous adversaries of science.

Whether you were Moslem, Christian, Druze, or Israeli, remember, God protect thee, that religious fanaticism for political goals or political fanaticism for religious purposes is the worst kind of fanaticism.

Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.

You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists …. We will annihilate the Jews.

We’re not fighting for Christianity but against human fanaticism of all kinds.

To what great evils has religion been able to impel men.

There is not a Musselman [Moslem] alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.

Universities are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry

The proper business of a University is ... not to tell us ... what we ought to believe, and make us accept the belief as a duty; but to give us information and training, and help us to form our own beliefs in a manner worthy of intelligent beings.

The state may not require that teaching and learning must be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or dogma

There are a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

My skepticism warns me of the danger of becoming a fanatic, a danger which no faith has yet averted.

… we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism…

The real problem is the awakening of religious extremism and the rabbinate's blatant and zealous strive for power and dominion. They challenge the government and position themselves and the Torah above the law.

Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.

We're living through an age of irrationality and religious "fervor" I would call it religious idiocy. It's exhausting to year after year be on the receiving end of this demagoguery.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

The problem is not that religious people are stupid. It's not that religious fundamentalists are stupid. I happen to think that you can be so well educated that you can build a nuclear bomb, and still get--and still believe that you will get the 72 virgins in paradise--that is the problem. The problem is that--religion--because it has been sheltered from criticism as it has been--allows people--perfectly sane, perfectly intelligent people--to believe en masse, what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

Where we get into problems, typically, is when our personal religious faith, or the community of faith that we participate in, tips into a sort of fundamentalist extremism, in which it's not enough for us to believe what we believe, but we start feeling obligated to, you know, hit you over the head because you don't believe the same thing. Or to treat you as somebody who's less than I am.

But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, & more than enough of it - Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a religioso turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart?

True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don't have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.

[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.