Zealousness Quotes

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

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

We came down on them like a flood! We went out among their cities! We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent…the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learned what truth is really like; once he has truly learned it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf.

There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

… it would be quite as easy to give 40 times 40 reasons why gentlemen should not engage in politics with such fiery zeal that they sometimes do, as it is to give 40 why ladies should not engage in them as well.

Morality crusades unite military regimes and religious zealots alike.

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.

I try hard not to preach, but I get carried away, which is a mistake, but it's a risk worth running.

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

There are so many examples today of how the kind of wonderful zealousness and unquestioning loyalty of young people can be harnessed by all sorts of insidious powers.

Fanaticism is ... overcompensation for doubt.

I'm a religious fanatic? Yes, I am, actually.

If I've ever regretted anything, it was putting all my eggs in one basket, holing up and kneeling at the altar of literature, instead of going out and at least reviewing, running around and trying to write for magazines. That would've been the intelligent thing to do, but I didn't, and that was because of fanaticism.

I can be intense in a lot of ways, but not the way you see the guy in 'The Salvation.'

It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God.

We are often moved with passion and think it to be zeal.

If Christianity were true, religious persecution would become a pious and charitable duty: if God designs to punish men for their opinions it would be an act of mercy to mankind to extinguish such opinions. By burning the bodies of those who diffuse them, many souls would be saved that would otherwise be lost, and so there would be an economy of torment in the long run. It is therefore not surprising that enthusiasts should be intolerant.

Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.

Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.

I have more zeal than wit.