Max Born Quotes

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

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

Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.

The sin of certainty leaves no room for the rest of us.

Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own.

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

The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.

Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding.

The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.

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

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.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

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.

Looking back at the worst times, 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 this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape.

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that where ever others differ from them it is so far error.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

The world, and the great and free United States in particular, is full of narrow-minded, ignorant, moronic, bigoted, cowardly, self-righteous, anemic, pig-headed, stupid, puritanical, hypocritical, prejudiced, fanatical, cocoa-blooded atavists, who soothe their inferiority complex by barking their hatred of anything new.