Reuven Rivlin Quotes

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

Aren’t any of us worried about certain people who are fighting holy wars against certain other people who do not believe what they believe.

Differences between Hindus and Muslims are so fundamental that there is nothing that matters in life upon which we agree.

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.

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.

Political differences will always generate a healthy debate, but over time the dialogue has become more hateful and at times violent.

First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.

I am thankful that all the people in the world who absolutely, positively, know what God wants, usually kill mostly each other.

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.

All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.

A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.

Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.

Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.

Israel's open-ended control over millions of noncitizen Palestinians ... has strained the country's otherwise robust democracy. The festering conflict and the country's lack of defined, recognized borders have encouraged extreme nationalism and divided Israelis. Indeed, Israel's continued control over Palestinian affairs has strengthened chauvinistic, racist, and violent tendencies on the fringes of the Israeli right.

Each side had its uninformed fanatics. And each side had political leaders who fanned the flames with their rhetoric.

Every conceivable cleavage of difference: Sindhi vs. Punjabi, Mohajirs vs. Pathans, Islam vs. Secularism, Shias vs. Sunnis, Deobandis vs. Barelvis, literates vs. illiterates, Woman vs. Man, Urban vs. Rural—has been exploited to magnify dissentions, giving rise to heinous blood baths, accentuated hatred, and intolerance.

The dispute between the Arabs and the Israelis is presented as a dispute over land, but it is not. It is over the incompatible religious differences in the utilization and control of the land.

Some people are afraid that there will be an European “us verses them” dichotomy with the Moslems. There already is an “us verses them” dichotomy. What else can you call it when “them” is killing “us.”

Holy war against lackeys, Jews, Christians and atheists.

The Middle East conflict has become the locus of the final war between Muslims and the West

The borders of Islam are bloody.

There is scarce any Principle, neither in the worship of God, nor humane sciences, from whence there may not spring dissentions, discords, reproaches, and by degrees war it self