Hosea Ballou Quotes

there is no fanatic like a religious fanatic.

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

What superstition and fanaticism on every side!

Where we get into problems, typically, is when our personal religious faith, or the community of faith that we participate in, tips into a sort of fundamentalist extremism, in which it's not enough for us to believe what we believe, but we start feeling obligated to, you know, hit you over the head because you don't believe the same thing. Or to treat you as somebody who's less than I am.

In the eyes of the Associated Press, American Christianity, which springs from the Protestant Reformation, is fundamentalist. And Christian Fundamentalists, radical Muslims, Hindu extremists, and fanatical Zionists are all the same - bloodthirsty lunatics.

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

I am dealing with fanaticism.

We’re not fighting for Christianity but against human fanaticism of all kinds.

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.

Militant Christians and Muslims alike see themselves as the only remaining challengers to the agnosticism of an increasingly secular world.

I was involved in an extreme or radical religious path from 1984-1989. I carried knives in the name of religious conflict. In point of fact, I felt something missing with the function of religion. I came to question whether Islam had truly commanded me to be exclusive and to isolate myself from other communities. There was a battle inside me…. I left that extremist group since it was impossible for me to survive in an exclusive community. Because Islam supports civilization, it should work for the betterment of human life. On the contrary, religious extremism and intolerance will destroy human civilization.

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.

Most victims of terrorism have been Muslim. So there’s not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between extremists and moderates of all the religions.

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.

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.

Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity.

Religious extremism. We hear about it all the time. We see it all the time. Heck, most of us are just sick of talking about it all the time.

Religiosity is suffocating in Pakistan. It invariably stokes the fire in driving society to religious extremism.

The United States is off the international spectrum in religious extremism.

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.

I find that religion really does motivate people to do horrible things because they have this passionate faith in whatever their religion happens to be, and it teaches them that the other religion is the wrong one.

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

An interesting thing about the religious people who run Iran is that one of their problems with Ahmadinejad, who they thought would be one of their guys because he's so religious, is that he actually has some really nutty ideas about religion. He's too religious. He's too literal. I mean, there are plenty of people in Iran who like Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs, just as there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists in America who like George W. Bush's beliefs. But there are also plenty of people who are very uncomfortable with his overt religiosity.

Everybody knows that fanaticism is religion caricatured; bears, indeed, about the same relation to it that a monkey bears to a man; yet, with many, contempt of fanaticism is received as a sure sign of hostility to religion.

Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil