Paul Eldridge Quotes

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.

Conservatives are always right about everything. We are. We are.

It is almost impossible to convince people who are under the influence of ideological bigotry that whose whom they regard as belonging to the enemy species are human.

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas.

Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma.

I don't believe in any kind of fundamentalism.

Those who believe that they have absolute truth and the only moral system are destructive both to themselves and to those whom they try to convert.

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

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

I believe that dogma is often evil.

There is no bigotry like that of 'free thought' run to seed.

A lot of harm has come in all eras from people attached to one view of 'spiritual' truth.

The fanatics should know that we hold our beliefs just as deeply as they hold theirs.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

Terror … is often the result of giving politics a sacred, absolute dimension.

There is a segment of the right that doesn't care about winning, what I call zealotry masquerading as principle.

It is in the uncomprisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma that the danger lies.

The trouble with radicals is that they read only radical literature, and the trouble with conservatives is that they don't read anything.

No sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by party spirit.

Extremism is born when the social-political situation creates pressure which threatens the community. However, there are religious justifications for political pressure. People legitimize the use of (Koranic) verses that Jews and Christians will always be the enemy of Islam. People use such verses without looking at the historical context of the verses. They always use it as if the enmity with Jews and Christian is permanent.

Politicians are trapped in their own views.

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

… contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.

… the politically engaged will tend also to be the most closed-minded.