Extremist Quotes & Sayings

The best answer to the extremists is to build a better world. — Klaus Schwab

But on the extremist side I didn't get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me. — Jon Ronson

I've got used to criticisms and, naturally, I try to make sure I don't listen to the more extreme ones because most of the people who have taken their right-wing extremist view of my life are people that I've never met. — Maurice Strong

I'm an extremist, I have to deal with my own extreme personality, and I walk the fine line of wanting to die and wanting to be the ruler of it all. — Davey Havok

The (campaign) ads all have the same tone - the voice is hushed and amazed when talking about The Enemy, as if you should worry how this amoral, power-mad, extremist puppy-strangler clawed his way out of hell and landed in your district. And the voice is happy and relieved when talking about The Most Noble Candidate, as though he's Santa, Will Rogers and Lincoln all rolled into one. — James Lileks

I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist.
Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men — Jenny Nordberg

Thousands of mercenaries, who have trained in camps on the territory of Chechnya as well as come in from abroad, are actually preparing to impose extremist ideas on the whole world. — Boris Yeltsin

As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers. The alternative, one so transparent that it should need no urging, is to abandon the principle of automatic respect for religious faith. This is one reason why I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself, not just against so-called 'extremist' faith. The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism. — Richard Dawkins

Open debate is our strongest tool in standing up to extremism. The far more dangerous avenue is to force extremist ideas underground, where they can fester without competition. — Jonas Gahr Store

My style's not for everyone - I'm an extremist. — Taylor Momsen

Once started, religious strife has a tendency to go on and on - to become permanent feuds. Today we see such intractable inter-religious wars in Northern Ireland, between Jews and Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Hindus and Muslims in South Asia and in many other places. Attempts to bring about peace have failed again and again. Always the extremist elements invoking past injustices, imagined or real, will succeed in torpedoing the peace efforts and bringing about another bout of hostility. — Mahathir Mohamad

It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant ... — Andre Vltchek

What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real scholars and theologians its difficult questions. There is little doubt that the atheist has the bigger imagination: the first reason is due to his persistent caricatures of what constitutes a Christian; the second because of his belief that most of his questions are actually rhetorical. From this I can infer that, instead of laughing at one another (the Christian at modern atheist immaturity and the modern atheist at Christian stupidity), we would have a better chance at productivity laughing with one another as we all dumb down what we don't understand. — Criss Jami

An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals. — Leon Panetta

We've got a deeply flawed political system with an insane overreaching extremist element, with a Supreme Court that is completely loony. — Lizz Winstead

The difference between the tolerant and the extremist was not so great. Looking into the Other, we can always find something of ourselves within. — Manil Suri

Extremist perspectives win sympathy and recruits because they offer narratives that claim to identify deep injustices and enemies. — Jonas Gahr Store

In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated unto believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad and educated women as a rule, tend to withhold their blessings from such things. — Greg Mortenson

I'm not an extremist, you know. — Brigitte Bardot

I think what's going to hurt the Republicans enormously is the extremist position of Mitt Romney on the immigration issue and states like New Mexico, states like Colorado, Nevada, Arizona - and I think it's going to be the margin of victory for President Obama, a very narrow victory. — Bill Richardson

I will continue to work for the advancement of freedoms in Egypt and the Arab world until I drop dead ... Education itself - which can and should play an important role in the apprenticeship of tolerance and respect for other people - sometimes encourages identitarian closure, or even extremist behaviour ... It is therefore vital to ensure that education does not encourage rejection of other people or identitarian closure, but that on the contrary it encourages knowledge and respect for other cultures, other religions and other ways of being and living. — Boutros Boutros-Ghali

What's curious about the left's current obsession with Timothy McVeigh is that it proves that - despite a frantic search for 15 years - liberals have come across no better evidence of burgeoning "right-wing extremist" violence than a drug-taking, self-described "agnostic" who was thrown out of the Michigan Militia and who proclaimed, "Science is my religion." That sounds more like Bill Maher than Rush Limbaugh. — Ann Coulter

There are good intentions behind many people's conversion to veganism, including an admirable devotion to the well-being of animals and a justified skepticism about the crap the USDA allows manufacturers to put in our food. But it's hard to ignore the often sanctimonious nature of what some nutritionists view as an 'extremist' way of eating. — Julie Klausner

Chance explorations on search engines do not 'accidentally' lead users to extremist websites. — Maajid Nawaz

Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.
Alexander Supertramp, May 1992 — Christopher McCandless

I take a very simple view that a violent extremist at some point previously been an extremist, and by definition is an extremist, so you do need to look at that non-violent extremism. — Theresa May

I'm an extremist so I'm either hated or loved. I think it's down to when I first got to Formula One not always knowing what I was saying, saying things that mean one thing but people were taking the other way and then people don't forget. — Lewis Hamilton

As long as a white man does it, it's alright, a black man is supposed to have no feelings. But when a black man strikes back he's an extremist, he's supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be nonviolent, and love his enemy no matter what kind of attack, verbal or otherwise, he's supposed to take it. But if he stands up in any way and tries to defend himself, then he's an extremist. — Malcolm X

I'm an extremist? I don't think so. I think people that call me an extremist are extremely brain dead and soulless. — Ted Nugent

One stupid act of some stupid extremist puts us all down. — Amani

If someone says, 'No, no, no, the earth is round!', they think this person is an extremist. That's what it's like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC. — Jeff Randall

What we cannot deny is that there's an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism. — Maajid Nawaz

Religious warriors are not an anomaly. It is a mistake to classify believers of particular religious and dogmatic religionlike ideologies into two groups, moderate versus extremist. The true cause of hatred and violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism. Faith is the one thing that makes otherwise good people do bad things. Nowhere do people tolerate attacks on their person, their family, their country - or their creation myth. In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality - including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth - the faith - of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else's sacred creation myth is "religious bigotry." It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat. — Edward O. Wilson

Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I have an extremely addictive personality. I'm an extremist. — Leif Garrett

In training, don't be afraid to be an oddball, eccentric, or extremist. Only by daring to go against tradition can new ways of training be learned. The trick is recognizing quickly when a new approach is counterproductive. — Benji Durden

Much extremist activity falls short of directly inciting people to violence or other crimes and so is not caught by laws on incitement. Neither does the Public Order Act, used to protect groups of people from harassment, deal with the problem. — David Blunkett

My work means that we have lived in different parts of the world and in each there has always been something to be afraid of. Gangsters, extremist political groups Right and Left tossing bombs into restaurants, hijacks, holdups, a city plumb on the line of an earthquake fault. We have long had a compact, with ourselves, with life; life is dangerous. We live with that; in the one certainty that fear is the real killer. — Nadine Gordimer

Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences. — James Nicoll

There are a certain number of extreme behaviours led by fundamentalists who are using their religion for political ends and use extremist techniques. — Jean-Francois Cope

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." — Martin Luther King Jr.

If you look at the people who are advising Rudy Giuliani it turns out that they seem to be all the people who were too insane or too extremist to even get on the George W. Bush team. — Josh Marshall

Congress has mandated an annual report on street gang, outlaw biker, and domestic extremist activity in the military since 2008. — Carter F. Smith

Prior to his takeover of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was camping near Paris, giving daily news conferences to a fawning international press corps without a murmur of complaint to France from the United States about the disaster it was coddling in the incredibly naive liberal belief that this extremist cleric would be an improvement over the Shah. — Alexander Haig

But 85 percent of the mosques have extremist leadership in this country. Most Muslims, the overwhelming majority of Muslims, are loyal Americans. — Peter T. King

The attack on Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 is a stark reminder that our nation must remain vigilant in protecting our citizens from the threat of Al-Qaeda and similar extremist terrorist entities around the world. — Bob Corker

Yes, I'm an extremist. The Black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a Black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention. — Malcolm X

... Mellor's statement is extremist in two directions: human civilization is in imminent peril, and only one solution will work. I doubt both these formulations, and almost every fiction I have encountered that depends upon them. — Richard T. Nash

What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice
the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero. — Wyndham Lewis

It's time ... the Republican Party end the war on women they started. Whether it's the Blunt-Rubio amendment, personhood or attempts to repeal Roe v. Wade, we aren't going to let extremist politicians dictate to women what we can or cannot do with our bodies. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

The terrorists want civil war. Al-Qaida is attacking Shiites. The Shiite militias are taking revenge on the Sunnis. And the Sunnis are become more extremist, with some joining al-Qaida. — Zalmay Khalilzad

I have found a certain type calls himself a Liberal ... Now I always thought I was a Liberal. I came up terribly surprised one time when I found out that I was a Right-Wing Conservative Extremist, when I listened to everybody's point of view that I ever met, and then decided how I should feel. But this so-called new Liberal group, Jesus, they never listen to your point of view ... — John Wayne

In an age of militant mediocrity, an 'extremist' is anyone who takes a position. — John Loeffler

BY THE EARLY 1960S, GE was receiving more speaking invitations for me from around the country than I could handle. And, although I was still saying the same things that I'd said for six years during the Eisenhower administration, I was suddenly being called a right-wing extremist. — Ronald Reagan

If we follow the traditional way of thought, there will always be traditional enemies. Extremist circles from both sides will find causes to give rise to problems. — Fatos Nano

Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture - and making a blanket judgment about the world's second largest religion - is simply bigotry. — Reza Aslan

I have founded Khudi, in Pakistan, a youth movement which tries to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate. — Maajid Nawaz

Extremist material of any kind always looks gaudy and cheap, like a bad pizza menu. Not because they can't afford decent computers - these days you can knock up a professional CD cover on a pay-as-you-go mobile - but because anyone who's good at graphic design is likely to be a thoughtful, inquisitive sort by nature. And thoughtful, inquisitive sorts tend to think fascism is a bit shit, to be honest. If the BNP really were the greatest British party, they'd have the greatest British designer working for them - Jonathan Ive, perhaps, the man who designed the iPod. But they don't. They've got someone who tries to stab your eyes out with primary colours.
— Charlie Brooker

These extremist groups can mobilise a certain demographic to do some very stupid and deadly things." "This — Estelle Ryan

To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. — Cass R. Sunstein

We are in a world that is quite extremist and extremism makes more noise. Normality does not sell. — Vicente Del Bosque

To a considerable extent we are faced by a technology arms race with terrorists. The communications revolution has made it easier for terrorist groups to reach out to vulnerable individuals with their violent extremist ideology and propaganda. It has also facilitated fundraising, recruitment and training. — Pauline Neville-Jones

Members of every major street gang, outlaw biker, and domestic extremist group have been found in a number of military branches. — Carter F. Smith

The United States of America is engaged in a war against an extremist group of folks. — George W. Bush

It is impossible to have a Jewish, democratic state and at the same time to control all of Eretz Israel. If we insist on fulfilling the dream in its entirety, we are liable to lose it all. Everything. That is where the extremist path takes us. — Ariel Sharon

According to the oil and gas industry and their proponents, I am a communist, terrorist, Nazi, Russian-sympathizing, anti-American, arsonist, extremist. — Josh Fox

Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. — Christopher McCandless

Was not Jesus an extremist in love? - "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." — Martin Luther King Jr.

In caving to an extremist minority that represents no one but itself, you acknowledge its power. — Charb

The extremist, isolationist policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen have been rejected and crushed — Romano Prodi

Florence had the Alberti fighting for freedom, but never had real Jacobins. It experienced the Viva Maria insurrections, but never really witnessed strong extremist passions. Using the comparison of the colours universally celebrated by Stendhal, we can say that the Florentine red rather resembled a pink and that the black looked more like a grey. — Franco Cardini

...it was the very government and the way they treated us that started us on that road. For example, in my case, when they beat me in the DIC cells for being a "communist" and an "extremist" and all that, they awoke a great curiosity in me: "What is communism? What is socialism?" Every day they beat me over the head with that. And I began to ask myself: "What's a socialist country? How are problems solved there? How do people live there? Are the miners massacred there?" And then I began to analyze: "What have I done? What do I want? What do I think? Why am I here? I only asked for justice for the people, I only asked for education to be better, I asked that there be no more massacres like the terrible San Juan massacre. Is that socialism? Is that communism? — Domitila Barrios De Chungara

What do the American people think? I am eager to know. I would like to believe the majority of Americans want to see Justice done, and they are not interested in financing the detention of innocent people. I know there is a small extremist minority that believes that everybody in this Cuban prison is evil, and that we are treated better than we deserve. But this opinion has no basis but ignorance. I am amazed that somebody can build such an incriminating opinion about people he or she doesn't even know. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

You have to be an extremist to believe that you're gonna be the president of the United States and your name is Barack Hussein Obama! And he's using extreme methods, but his application is very smooth. Michelle Obama is extreme, her presence is extreme. And it's an extreme good. Extreme is not negative. — Mos Def

The argument most commonly made in the filibuster's favor is crudely partisan: 'Our side may be in the majority now, but someday it will be in the minority, and when that happens we'll want to block the other side's extremist agenda.' — Timothy Noah

The University of Westminster is well known for being a hotbed of extremist activity. — Maajid Nawaz

I accept the term extremist with pride. — Ashin Wirathu

The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism. — Maajid Nawaz

I get into each thing I do, to the point where nothing else matters. I guess I'm an extremist. — Neil Young

The combination of extremist ideology, a warped understanding of reality and nuclear weapons is a combination that no-one in the international community can accept. — Mark Regev

Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light. — Cass Sunstein

Radicals have value, at least; they can move the center. On a scale of 1 to 5, 3 is moderate, 1 and 5 the hardliners. But if a good radical takes it up to 9, then 5 becomes the new center. I already saw it working in the American Muslim community. For years women were neglected in mosques, denied entrance to the main prayer halls and relegated to poorly maintained balconies and basements. It was only after a handdful of Muslim feminists raised "lunatic fringe" demands like mixed-gender prayers with men and women standing together and even women imams giving sermons and leading men in prayer that major organizations such as ISNA and CAIR began to recognize the "moderate" concerns and deal with the issue of women in mosques.
I've taken part in the woman-led prayer movement, both as a writer and as a man who prays behind women, happy to be the extremist who makes moderate reform seem less threatening. Insha'Allah, what's extreme today will not be extreme tomorrow. — Michael Muhammad Knight

The Koch brothers, through the expenditure of billions of dollars and the creation and support of dozens of extreme right organizations, have taken fringe extremist ideas and made them mainstream within the Republican Party. — Bernie Sanders

The immediate present belongs to the extremists, but the future belongs to the moderates. — Helen Suzman

As a senator from the only true swing district in the Texas Senate, I've been targeted by the GOP for my outspoken criticism of their extremist attacks on public education and voting rights, to name just two examples. — Wendy Davis

I'll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King. — Malcolm X

I hate extremes of any kind. Communism [seeks] the domination of the state over the individual ... All my life I have stood against banning Communism or other extremist organisations because, if you do that, they go underground and it gives them an excitement that they don't get if they are allowed to pursue their policies openly. We'll beat them into the ground on argument. — Margaret Thatcher

Some feminists have this party-line attitude, and they can be very extremist. The most enlightened characters in my film are women. — Lina Wertmuller

It is six months before the election, and the Republicans have already done their focus groups. How do I know? I can hear it in their "message," which they repeat over and over again like a mantra: "Bernie Sanders is ineffective. Bernie Sanders is out of touch. Bernie Sanders is a left-wing extremist. Bernie Sanders rants and raves on the House floor and still no one listens to him. Susan Sweetser, on the other hand, is a sensible moderate who can work with everyone." They think that's how they can beat me. Maybe. — Bernie Sanders

I am a feminist, but I'm not an extremist. I know what feminism is, but I'm not all women empowerment, marching in the streets. I'm not a die-hard girl's girl. — Scheana Marie

I had known Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, for nearly twenty years. He was a career Air Force officer who had risen through the ranks to become Vice President under Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian ruler who fought the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973 and later signed the Camp David Accords. Mubarak was injured in the extremist attack that assassinated Sadat in 1981, but he survived, became President, and cracked down hard on Islamists and other dissidents. He ruled Egypt like a pharaoh with nearly absolute power for the next three decades. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

People have been fed misinformation. The fact is that the fighting that is going on on the ground in Syria is with Al Qaeda, with Jabhat al Nusra, with Daesh. The pockets, small pockets, of other groups are usually surrounded by these various extremist groups ... Once they stop fighting, there is nothing for the Syrian government to hit other than the terrorist organizations. — Mohammad Javad Zarif

If we say leaders are incompetent, we are going to fuel extremist, populist, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist parties. — Jose Manuel Barroso

Death is a part of the orderly process of human life. There is nothing as final as extinction. — James Morris Robinson

It is necessary to suppress any extremist actions, on all sides, regardless of their origin. — Vladimir Putin

You were either all in or all out. It is an extremist religion. There is no middle ground. And there within its structure lies the danger. — Leah Remini

It is a great mistake to think that the extremist is a better man than the moderate. Usually the difference is not that he is morally stronger, but that he is intellectually weaker. He is not more virtuous. He is simply more foolish. — Theodore Roosevelt

US Vice President Joe Biden gave the US government's real view of its regional and Syrian allies with undiplomatic frankness when speaking at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics on October 2. He told his audience that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and UAE were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. — Patrick Cockburn

Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes
while no becoming an extremist ... **Most companies don't do paradox very well.**
(emphasis by author)
[2002] p.25f — Gary Hamel