Richard P. Feynman Quotes

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 is so sure of itself as fanaticism.

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

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.

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.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

Looking back at the worst times [in history], it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in the matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agreed with them.

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

… 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.

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.

Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.

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

Claiming that you have got the truth wrapped up does breed violence and intolerance.

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.

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 such a thing as fanaticism, it is always wrong, and if you disagree, you're wrong too.

The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.

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.

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?

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.