Emile-Auguste Chartier Alain Quotes

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth".

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

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

It is in the uncomprisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma that the danger lies.

Fanaticism is ... overcompensation for doubt.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess commitment to some special or constricting idea.

A zealot is a person who, having forgotten his original purpose, redoubles his efforts.

Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.

Zealots are like one track-pony. Don't get in their way without expecting to get hurt.

Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who think differently from him.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

A fanatic is a nut who has something to believe in.

Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

Ideas can never be defeated by military force. They can only be defeated by better ideas.

I am a zealot, and I am wildly proud of it.

Bolsheviks are sincere. Fascists are sincere. Lunatics are sincere. People who believe the earth is flat are sincere. They can’t all be right. Better make certain that you’ve got something to be sincere about and with.

The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.

Nothing is so sure of itself as fanaticism.