Blaise Pascal Quotes

So many of the people killed in the world have been killed in religious conflicts. There is no more dangerous person in the world than someone who is doing what God has commanded.

A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case.

It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God.

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven.

What superstition and fanaticism on every side!

I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God - and I hope you'll quote me on that.

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

Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.

There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

The evils which sapped the nation’s strength had all been wrought in the name of religion.

There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.

To what great evils has religion been able to impel men.

Religion can turn holy stories into flaming swords.

My skepticism warns me of the danger of becoming a fanatic, a danger which no faith has yet averted.

Men whose religion was excessively zealous split themselves into opposing factions, and once divided by a single mistake they disagreed on everything and came to be entirely at odds with one another.

How many lives have been lost by men who believe God had commanded them to do so?

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

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.

In a chaotic world, fundamentalism can be a moral compass.

There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

That both Muslim fundamentalists and the Christian right are today focusing their attempts to regain control in a rapidly changing world on frantic efforts to maintain control over women, particularly over women's sexuality. Moreover, given their mythologies about "holy wars," it is also understandable that they should use "divinely approved" violence to do so…

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

She died of galloping Christianity of the malignant California type.

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.