Reuven Rivlin Quotes

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

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

… the politically engaged will tend also to be the most closed-minded.

Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—

People are so quick to demonize and stereotype those on the other side that they often say that it's impossible to work with people on the other side.

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

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.

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

We don't really have elections; we fight crusades. Each side usually believes that it, and it alone, represents the true faith.

Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right

Partisanship has gotten worse and worse.

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.

When ideas lead to ideology, that's a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image of an enemy, and it leads to the murder and massacre.

We cannot sway extremists with rational thought or with our ideas of right and wrong.

I'm not going to be the rock star of the far right and frankly on the rock star of the far left.

I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

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.

I don't think any extremism is rational.

The war on terrorism is a war of ideas.

People at the political extremes have an advantage over the rest of us. Only they seem to know exactly who and what is wrong with America and precisely what policies and programs should be adopted to fix it.

The Middle East is a region where extremists go all the way and moderates just go away.

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.

My feeling is that the most dangerous people are always those who take a hardline position - and nothing inspires that sort of extremism like difference.

The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no bigotries or absurdities too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions.

A fanatic is always the fellow that is on the opposite side.