Seymour Hersh Quotes

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

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.

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.

One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.

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

To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.

The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

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

I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It's fundamentally wrong.

I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

I don't believe in any kind of fundamentalism.

Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.

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.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.

Only the madman is absolutely sure.

Almost any theory, even those espoused by self-proclaimed conservatives, can be held in an absolutistic way such that it poses a threat to institutional and political stability.

I am dealing with fanaticism.

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

It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

What superstition and fanaticism on every side!

Nothing is so sure of itself as fanaticism.