Robertson Davies Quotes

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.

Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.

I am dealing with fanaticism.

What superstition and fanaticism on every side!

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

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

Looking back at the worst times [in history], it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in the matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agreed with them.

Nothing is so sure of itself as fanaticism.

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

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

I'm always having a crisis of faith, with everything. People who are certain are terrifying to me. That's how religious wars get started.

there is no fanatic like a religious fanatic.

There is no doubt that religious fanatics have done more to prejudice the cause they affect to advocate than have its opponents.

Fanatics, as a class, have far more zeal than intellect and are fanatics only because they have. There can be no fanaticism but where there is more passion than reason; and hence, in the nature of things, movements originating in it run down in a short time by their folly and extravagance.

That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history.

It is not possible to unknow what you do know - the result of that is fanaticism.

I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It's fundamentally wrong.

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

A mistake made by many people with great convictions is that they will let nothing stand in the way of their views, not even kindness.

The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.

Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful.

A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic - all of them are the same. The thinking that, 'If you don't think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;' this is something to condemn.

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