David Hyde Pierce Quotes

I'm not frightened about terrorism. I'm frightened about the roots of what we call terrorism.

People are so quick to demonize and stereotype those on the other side that they often say that it's impossible to work with people on the other side.

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

You see in times of crisis that extremist forces, populist forces, have a better ground to oversimplify things and to manipulate feelings. Feelings of fear.

Nothing will ensure war more certainly or entrench rivalries more seriously than for or against thinking!

Right now, politics follows the rules of talk radio - using conflict, tension, fear, and resentment to find new recruits.

Each side had its uninformed fanatics. And each side had political leaders who fanned the flames with their rhetoric.

Hatred, anger, and violence can destroy us: the politics of polarization is dangerous.

Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.

Fanaticism is the greatest threat today. Literally, the 21st century threatened by fanatics, and we have fanatics in every religion, unfortunately, and what can we do against them? Words nothing else, I'm against violence but only words.

Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.

Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

We cannot sway extremists with rational thought or with our ideas of right and wrong.

If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor.

First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.

The fundamentalists are increasing. People, afraid to oppose those fundamentalists, shut their mouths. It is really very difficult to make people move against a sensitive issue like religion, which is the source of fundamentalism.

I think the first decade of this century is going to be remembered as a time of extremism.

The University of Westminster is well known for being a hotbed of extremist activity.

'9/11' came out of a swamp of hatred created by us.

I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there really is such a threat - and it will come draped not in an American flag, but in the name of tolerance and health.

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

Divisiveness is not good for the people.

It's quite easy for schisms to develop in societies, in villages, cities or countries.

We're never going to be able to get rid of terrorism, because there is always going to be evil in the world.

You can compromise between good, better, and best, and you can compromise between bad and worse and terrible. But you can't compromise between good and evil. And now people look at the other side as a completely different kind of animal and say, 'They are taking the country down the road to purgatory.' It's complete intolerance.