Zealotry Quotes

Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed. ~ Anne Rice

We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators. ~ Stephen Fry

We shouldn't let anti-science zealotry shut down the ability to produce low-cost, quality food for billions across the globe. ~ Ted Cruz

Apparently there's nothing more dangerous than a religious criminal. ~ James Cook

Despite my deep unease about animal advocates working for things we don't want and asking for changes we don't believe in, I am not an "abolitionist." First, the abolition of animal slavery will no more end speciesism by itself than the abolition of American slavery ended racism. To change the world, I think we should aim higher. Second, I'm increasingly convinced that no matter who uses the term, it hides a slur. When used to refer to others, it connotes zealotry and obstructionism, and when taken as self-definition, it is seen as an attack by anyone who does not apply it to herself. Yes, it's a highly defensible moral philosophy, right up there with Peter Singer's application of Utilitarianism to animal liberation, and Tom Regan's Theory of Rights, but like those other intellectual concepts, it's useful only so far as it engenders right action. ~ Sarahjane Blum

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. ~ Carl Sagan

Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are not won by flowery speeches. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Legal ethics is a misnomer ... lawyers conducting themselves legally are not necessarily conducting themselves morally ." ... and ... "The zero sum nature of the legal system, combined with the universal adoption of zealotry as the marching orders of practioners and prosecutors, transforms the moral mission of the legal system from one of truth-seeking, storytelling, and justice, to one of fabrication, distortion, and manipulation in pursuit of victory. These victories, however, make us all losers. ~ Thane Rosenbaum

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. ~ Joseph Campbell

Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power. ~ Salman Rushdie

I must say that when I first learned of the existence of the Australian Greenhouse Office, I assumed it was responsible for supplying tomatoes to the Parliament House kitchen. But, no, as I soon learnt as industry minister, it was in fact a government funded redoubt of veritable soldiers in a war against carbon dioxide. The zealotry and obsessive passion of these warriors in the battle against the apparent evils of carbon dioxide remains a curiosity to me. After fighting these people for three years as industry minister, I really did wish they would just go away and grow tomatoes. ~ Nick Minchin

Too many of us die without knowing transcendent joy, in part because we pursue one form or another of materialism. We seek meaning in possessions, in pursuit of cosmic justice for earthly grievances, in the acquisition of power over others. But one day Death reveals that life is wasted in these cold passions, because zealotry of any kind precludes love except of the thing that is idolized. ~ Dean Koontz

Pat Buchanan ... was fired by MSNBC for doing nothing more than voicing his rock-solid conservative thoughts on the otherwise failing network ... The real message of the left is intolerance, zealotry, bigotry and hate. The left has no use for the First Amendment or the rest of the Constitution unless it fits their multicultural, euro-socialist agenda, which is failing all across Europe and everywhere it is practiced. ~ Ted Nugent

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage ...
As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage ~ Orson Scott Card

Religious practice in the Land of the Bible tends to encourage exclusivity and discrimination rather than love and magnanimity. There is no place like the Holy Land to make one cynical about religion. ~ Raja Shehadeh

boon for me, and for Turkey and the Middle East as a whole. We have a rich and varied history, a history that is being forgotten in today's world, buried beneath senseless wars, terrorism and religious zealotry. My museum aims to bring that history once again into the mind of the world, to show East and West that we are not simple, violent brutes. Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization and I hope one day we can bring that to the world's notice once again. ~ Alex Zabala

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Give a man with a death wish a bottle of whisky and a loaded gun, you get a dead body. Give a martyr a quote from scripture and a pocket full of
prayers and you get a room full of corpses. ~ Kevis Hendrickson

That's what you get,' he said, nodding towards a group of the men engaged in some close-order military drill, 'when you give people Bibles and guns. You should give 'em either one or the other, but not both. It just messes up their brains. ~ K.W. Jeter

Peter tells Langdon that the Masons believe that the Bible is an esoteric allegory written by humanity, and that, like most religious texts around the globe, it contains veiled instructions for harnessing humanity's natural God-like qualities and is not meant to be interpreted as the commands of an all-powerful deity. This interpretation has been lost amid centuries of scientific skepticism and fundamentalist zealotry. The Masons have (metaphorically) buried it, believing that, when the time is right, its rediscovery will usher in a new era of human enlightenment. ~ The Lost Symbol Wikipedia

The gun-control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts - or even the lives of other people. ~ Thomas Sowell

The unmistakable lesson is that such is the myopic zealotry of environmentalists like Obama that they would implement policies virtually guaranteed to harm our economy significantly, even when they offer no promise of appreciable environmental benefits. ~ David Limbaugh

Scattered across the Roman Empire, it was only natural for the gospel writers to distance themselves from the Jewish independence movement by erasing, as much as possible, any hint of radicalism or violence, revolution or zealotry, from the story of Jesus, and to adapt Jesus's words and actions to the new political situation in which they found themselves. ~ Reza Aslan

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. ~ D.B.C. Pierre

I'm for open-mindedness and tolerance. I'm against any form of fanaticism, fundamentalism or zealotry, and this certainty of 'We have the truth.' The truth is far too large and complex. Nobody has the truth. ~ Philip Pullman

As the questions grow harder and more complicated, people yearn for simpler answers, one-sentence answers, answers that point unhesitatingly to a culprit who can be blamed for all our suffering, answers that promise that if we only eradicate the villains, all our troubles will vanish. ~ Amos Oz

Zeal was like gas, most dangerous when you could not see it. The wrong spark could light it at any time. ~ Frances Hardinge

During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I was always a doubter when it came to religion. How irrational of me, then, to love a zealot. But then, both love and zealotry are irrational states of mind. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I'm convinced that the most important division in human affairs is probably not the one between left and right, liberal and conservative. It's the one between zealotry and understanding, between absolute conviction and compromise, between preachers and politicians. ~ Bill Keller

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. ~ Norman G. Finkelstein

The enemy of idealism is zealotry. ~ Neil Kinnock

Jesus was crucified by Rome because his messianic aspirations threatened the occupation of Palestine, and his zealotry endangered the Temple authorities. ~ Reza Aslan

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. ~ Salman Rushdie

Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars. Let's go out and play. ~ Mary Roach