Margot Kidder Quotes

Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.

Some religious practitioners make absolutist claims for their beliefs: I've no interest in doing this, nor do I have any interest in converting people, which is doubtless a relief to anyone who has feared finding me on their doorstep asking if they'd like to know more about Odin.

In Spain you are a Catholic or you are nothing.

It's absurd that we're so quick to criticize Muslims for being fundamentalist when Christians can be just as extreme and fanatical and frightening.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

A man dies and goes to heaven. He is being shown around by an angel. Everything is just so sweet and gentle, the total golden tender presence of God everywhere, a pond over there, a beautiful field there, and some hills for people who like to hike, and this expansiveness in every direction of sky and light and physical beauty. And there is this section separated from the rest; it has beautiful high walls. The man who's just come to heaven says, "What's over there?" The angel says, "That's for the fundamentalists. They don't consider it heaven if anyone else got in.

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.

Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?

I think fundamentalism is this radical attitude toward one's own identity and civilization as compared to other people's identities and cultures.

Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

Particularly as a Jew, I don't like missionary work. I've had it focused on me, and I don't like it. Let people be what they want to be.

Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.

I may have implied on several occasions to several different people that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven't decided yet what I am or who I am.

The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.

When I hear from people that religion doesn't hurt anything, I say really? Well besides wars, the crusades, the inquisitions, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, the suppression of women, the suppression of homosexuals, fatwas, honor killings, suicide bombings, arranged marriages to minors, human sacrifice, burning witches, and systematic sex with children, I have a few little quibbles. And I forgot blowing up girl schools in Afghanistan.

Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. It's no coincidence that most of my abusive mail - sentencing me to exquisite Oriental tortures and relegating me to hell-fire and damnation -comes from self-admitted Catholics.

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.

We are undermining a generation's happiness by depriving them of national identity, religious identity, and gender identity

People who believe they are acting with the mandate of God, who see others who don't share their beliefs as inferior in the eyes of God, make dangerous leaders. Just ask Osama Bin Laden.

One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man.

I find most famous Christians to be full of themselves and of prejudice and self-loathing, masquerading as devout religious belief. I find all fundamentalism to be terrifying and very destructive.

No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

A Jew is anyone who says he is.

It was very interesting to me that when Louisiana was destroyed in that flood the fundamentalists were very quick to say, it's the punishment of God on a sinful city. Now that the oil industry has been so hard hit in Galveston, are they up on their pulpits saying, God is punishing the oil industry? No, no, no!

I think it is going to be very difficult for any church that still calls itself a church, never to try and convince someone that their religion is the best one.