Zealotry Quotes & Sayings

The enemy of idealism is zealotry. — Neil Kinnock

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. — Sarah Vowell

Then faith's paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal ... Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

Today's zealots are mostly those pretending to be anti-religious. — Criss Jami

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

It's common to think things will never happen where you are-never in Cambridge, never in New York, never in Seattle-that sort of thing, whatever it is, never happens here, not in our community. Then it happens, right in front of you, and you realize you were blind to it, that you forgot that intolerance and zealotry and viciousness are human currency everywhere, and it takes your breath away. — Mike Daisey

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

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

I actually think it's a huge tactical mistake for our movement to criticize religion on the basis of the pathological extremes. Because most of the people we want to persuade in the fall of their beliefs don't see them agents of the monstrous excesses zealotry. The part of religion that makes it open to criticism and which really makes it incompatible with science is not that it makes you evil, it said it's wrong and it makes you stupid. — P.Z. Myers

To the American people I say, awaken to what is happening. It is the duty of each citizen to be vigilant, to protect liberty, to speak out, left and right and disagree lest be trampled underfoot by misguided zealotry and extreme partisanship. — Robert Byrd

Author conveys contemporary respect for Methodist preachers who rode the circuit of frontier settlements to put themselves at risk for the Gospel near the Second Great Awakening. They were dubbed 'God's light artillery'. — Nancy Pearcey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoplophobia, the Flight from Personal Responsibility "Hoplophobia" is defined as the morbid fear of firearms. The term is derived from the Greek word, hoplon, which refers to weapons. The late Colonel Jeff Cooper, firearms instructor, author, father of "the modern technique of the pistol," and founder of Gunsite Firearms Academy, attributed anti-gun zealotry to hoplophobia, which he defined as an irrational aversion to and fear of firearms and other forms of weaponry. Cooper opined that anti-gun hoplophobes held the idea that firearms and other deadly weapons have a will of their own. — Bruce N. Eimer

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

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

The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it.
[As quoted in The New Yorker, April 25, 2011] — Francis Crick

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

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel. — Anatole France

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

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

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

Anyone who says he knows God's intention is showing a lot of very human ego. — Michael Crichton

You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord's service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love. — Nikos Kazantzakis

The politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity. — H.W. Brands

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe. — Theodore Roosevelt

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

Moderation is a wiser policy than zealotry — Christopher Paolini

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

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

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

Nobody wants zealotry in a police force, you know? You do want to know that the guy who's got that badge, is confident enough to judge a certain level of benign corruption. Like a man steals some food to feed his starving children. — Russell Crowe

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

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

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