Michael Crichton Quotes

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 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.

Fundamentalism is still on the march.

I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own - they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes.

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

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

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.

A fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

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

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others

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.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth".

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.

Fundamentalists are crazy. They're the real world equivalent to the evil geniuses of our spy fiction and our superhero comics. They want to mold the world into a specific shape that they really believe in, and if you don't believe in that, if you can't relate to that, it just seems crazy.

Nothing outrages and disappoints an extremist more than compromise.

In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

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

I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It's fundamentally wrong.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

The persecuting spirit has its origin... in the assumption that one's own opinions are infallibly correct.

I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

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

Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.

I have an intense dislike of doctrines, because you will always end up eating your words.