Daniel Dennett Quotes

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

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

I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It's fundamentally wrong.

I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

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.

The fanatics should know that we hold our beliefs just as deeply as they hold theirs.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

Terror … is often the result of giving politics a sacred, absolute dimension.

What superstition and fanaticism on every side!

It is a dangerously short step from frustration to fanaticism.

Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.

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.

Extremism and terrorism are based on lack of hope and an ideology that takes advantage of that.

Fundamentalist governments and organizations endanger stability in the world.

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.

Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.

It is necessary to name the enemy of human civilization, and this enemy is international terrorism associated with religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance.

I am dealing with fanaticism.

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.

Hate-racial, tribal, religious, ancestral, national, social, ethical, political, economic, ideological-in itself represents the inexorable defeat of mankind, its absolute defeat. If there is an area in which mankind cannot claim the slightest progress, this surely is it. It does not take much for human beings, collectively or individually, to suddenly one day pit themselves like wild beasts one against the other, their worst instincts laid bare, in a state of deleterious exaltation. One decision, one simple word, and a family or a community will drown in blood or perish in flames. Why is there so much violence, so much hate? How is it conceived, transmitted, fertilized, nurtured? As we face the disquieting, implacable rise of intolerance and fanaticism on more than one continent, it is our duty to expose the danger. By naming it. By confronting it.

Extremism destroyed those before you.

With the fundamentalist Islamic fanatics of today, there is no dialogue possible either, because for them all others are “infidel dogs”. As soon as the Other becomes a wrongdoer or an infidel, dialogue becomes impossible.

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

The real threat comes from terrorism.

What they have done, ISIS is very well outspoken about how much they hate our freedom, who we are as Americans.